I remember Sarah Sharp's news back in 2015. She felt 'technically respected' but didn't like the communication style of the kernel maintainers, so she left. I don't think there's much more to be said. If you're at the level where Torvalds is yelling at you, you're already breathing the thinnest air of Mt. Olympus.
I don't consider that to be "the thinnest air of Mt. Olympus"; there are a lot of people who contribute to Linux at the kernel developer level, and if you know them, they are just perfectly normal everyday people, good researchers, developers and software engineers, who happen to have an interest in the kernel. There are also a lot of people who don't bother contributing to the kernel, because it is below them: there is another air level above Mt. Olympus, and it remains perfectly breathable.
However, the communication style of the center of the Linux community is ... awful. Linus has the habit of exploding, sometimes for good reasons, and sometimes unreasonably. He is a "dictator for life"; alas, he is not at all benevolent. While he is personally a friendly and charming person (you should try having a few beers with him), his style of dealing with conflict in the kernel community, and dealing with people who for some reason or no reason upset him is awful, and has turned lots of people away from working on Linux. Sarah Sharp is just one example. What is even more troublesome is that the fraction of people who have been "drummed out of town" is significantly higher among female and minority kernel developers. When I say "minority", you have to be careful to not understand that solely in terms of skin color, it can also be about lifestyle, sexual orientation, or color of your paycheck (there is significant discrimination based on who your employer is). This is bad; from a purely selfish viewpoint, it is bad because it prevents some good developers from contributing to the progress in "systems" (operating, file, storage, network, ... systems). I know quite a few of these folks personally (Larry McVoy lives very near me, Tridge used to be a colleague, and I've had the aforementioned beers with Linus), and it pains me that good people can't get along. An interesting counter-example of a community that functions better is Python (even though I don't know Guido personally, he was the office-mate of a friend of mine, and I have first-hand information that Guido is very friendly and reasonable). There is a reason that Guido was the model for the title of "benevolent dictator for life", since he is actually benevolent, unlike Linus.
If the FreeBSD CoC were to prevent developers of the calibre of Sarah Sharp from quitting the FreeBSD community, it would be a success. Alas, the internal style of FreeBSD is quite different from that of Linux, and as such the CoC is much less necessary in FreeBSD.
Valeria Aurora is clearly a superb software engineer but her latest direction has lost me. A bit like when Spinal Tap did Jazz Odyssey. Sorry.
Love the Spinal Tap reference! Few people would probably grok it.
If you have communicated with Val for many years, or read her blog, you will understand her direction. It takes a while to understand where she comes from. If you are in the tech industry in Silly Valley, and see the trials and tribulations of your female (or gay or minority) colleagues all the time, her direction won't be lost on you. Well, unless you are Peter Thiel ...