I've only been using Fedora for about a week now, previously I used Debian for the past 10 years. Debian has various processes for dealing with difficult people. If anyone (including developers) continually is difficult on a mailing list then they are banned from the list. If a developer behaves badly enough, a motion can be presented for a call to vote for expulsion. I recall this happening a couple of times over the years.
I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu, but I do think that they are on to something with a code of conduct that can help to keep things civil.
Just my 2p
Maybe I'm being ridiculous but:
if a person is banned from the community for a social-rule violation that they do not accept or acknowledge then:
1. you better hope we can live w/o their particular contribution. B/c if we can't we've just screwed ourselves.
2. we better hope we can actually enforce your ban, b/c if we can't then they can make the entire mailing list/infrastructure we're trying to protect useless out of sheer spite. If you've never seen a mailing list TRULY spam-bombed by someone willing to subscribe manually and obliterate a list, it is not something you want to see twice. Spam filters won't help if the message would otherwise be HAM but is sent, say, 2000 times a day to 10000+ users on the list.
3. we better hope that we lockdown bugzilla accounts or woe be unto us.
Code of conduct violation enforcement is nearly impossible on the internet. If a person want to cause excruciating pain to everyone and, ultimately, halt all progress on fedora, they can. It's not even that hard.
I'm sorry, but attemtping to enforce a code of conduct is just silly.
I work for red hat now, they can discharge me if I'm out of line. That's true. Before I worked for red hat, what exactly could be done? Considering some of the, umm, disagreements I have had with people on this and other lists and the invective hurled back and forth, I'm reasonably confident that no one in fedora could have stopped me with a code of conduct.
-sv