Right, and Ruby has had Matz, Python had Guido and to a certain degree PHP had Rasmus. As soon as you have more than one captain in the ship, politics and drama seems unavoidable.
Although in this scenario, isn't code of conduct something much more "local" that the ringleader doesn't really need to step in every time to enforce?
CoC is just something I expect everybody to enforce when needed. Having a dedicated team to do that seems odd to me. I guess you still need someone to issue bans and to wield the ban hammer, but it _should_ happen infrequently that simply informing the violator of their violation should be enough (unless they're a troll and will continue violating, in which case they can be kicked).
Linus was also nearly driven out by "activists". Best I can tell he never actually said or did anything egregious - his European directness and sense of humor just upset some particularly fragile folks on the mailing list, and so did his refusal to grovel before them.
That said burntsushi at least doesn't seem like an activist to me, so the grievances are probably legitimate. Coming from someone less prominent they'd not have anywhere near the same weight in my eyes. We just don't know what they are.
I remember a person from current Rust's core team cheering when that person thought Linus is getting ousted from the project.
I take Linux organizational model over Rust's every day. A group of super competent people with no bullshit policy. It is proven. The problem is how to form the successor to the dictator.
Postgres has a core team, FreeBSD has one, C++ has a steering committee. You can find examples for whatever variant of governance you want. The "one person calls all the shots" model certainly can work. It can also fail and it often has (usually when said person has no interest anymore, but no successor is available or has the clout needed to succeed them).
