Quoting info at smallinnovations dot nl (info@???):

> CoCs are a fact of life in FOSS now and I'm for sure interested in
> reasoning about pro and con CoC's.

I'm not a fan because IMO the matters they address can be addressed as
well or better without them. In my experience, literally nothing that
gets done in their name requires them. Also, they are as a general
class purposefully vague so that they end up meaning anything or
nothing, just ritual clothing.

How open source software projects are governed differs a bit (e.g., the
much-studied Apache Foundation model being an outlier from most), but in
general there are a group of primary active project managers fully
empowered to act for the project's benefit. I have yet to see a case of
such a project's representatives sanctioning problem conduct that
couldn't simply have been carried out without a manifesto to justify it,
establishing by example -- the only meaningful evidence, in the end --
that bad conduct will be swiftly curtailed. It would IMO be refreshing
to see that done, _actually_ done, and vague policy handwaves kept to
the bare minimum as rarely useful.

My surmise is that adopting projects are attempting to hack human
psychology and sociology, unfortunately forgetting that they're
notoriously terrible (as a general rule) at so doing.

On the bright side, being purposefully vague to the point of tending to
mean anything or nothing, in my experience they work out to be
functionally harmless over the long term, once projects get used to
them, because the project leaders eventually remember that their role
is to act in whatever way is best for the project as they see it, and
they retroactively construe the CoC wording to justify whatever they would
have done without the CoC.

In effect, they turn into ritual clothing, and the reality behind them
is that the project leaders make decisions and quote CoC catechism.

So, they end up being a kind of windy NO-OP.

(As any relevance to Devuan Project is minuscule, I will leave it at that.)