(Flickr/Beraldo Leal) Linus Torvalds Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux operating system, is a bona fide genius. He's also a regular guy, and not nearly the kind of monster he's been made out to be.

But he doesn't suffer fools, he loves four-letter words, and has a huge sense of humor. And that combination has gotten him into increasing amounts of hot water over the years. To which he's mostly responded with the kind of color he's known for.

On Monday, the Linux Foundation kinda sorta slapped him on the wrist when they issued a new "Code of Conflict" policy that declared "personal insults or abuse are not welcome."

This comes after Torvalds' latest brouhaha in January went viral.

Torvalds was speaking at a Linux conference in New Zealand when people asked him about his infamous insult-laden rants on the Linux mailing list (the main way that Linux is worked on), and about diversity in the Linux world (where women and minorities are appallingly scarce).

His answers were flip:

I'm not a nice person, and I don't care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel — that's what's important to me ... all that [diversity] stuff is just details and not really important.

His remarks caused an outpouring of reactions from programmers. Some said that Torvalds's infamous "abusive" behavior on the Linux mailing list have made them avoid being part of the Linux world.

(Google+/Sarah Sharp) Sarah Sharp This was only the latest in a long list of episodes where he's been publicly called out over this stuff. Back in 2013, Intel programmer Sarah Sharp took a stand against it and told him to knock it off. Torvald's responded with an insightful rant on the nature of human relationships and labeled Sharp's call for civility "Bull---t."

After the episode in January, however, Torvald was more contrite. He didn't apologize but he did write a letter to the publication that broke the story, Ars Technica, to better explain his comments, admitting: "I also understand that other people are driven away by cursing and crass language when it all gets a bit too carried away."

He suggested in that letter that the open source world might need more "people who are good at mediating," as opposed to asking developers to behave themselves.

And that's exactly what this "Code of Conflict" policy does. It says that if "anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable" while working on Linux, they should report the situation to the Technical Advisory Board who will step in and mediate.

(Wikipedia) Interestingly, Torvalds was not the one to write this policy. His right-hand man, Greg Kroah-Hartman, wrote it and cutely submitted it as a "patch" to the Linux system.