And pasting here my response for reference:

Thank you for responding and caring about this matter. It partially resolves the problem, but unfortunately only partially.

Email address of EU individual, like me or few other maintainers who confirmed that they received mentioned PyTorch Foundation mailing, is personal data thus protected by GDPR. Public availability of that address does not remove GDPR protection.

Therefore according to GDPR, neither the PyTorch Foundation, the Linux Foundation EU nor the Linux Foundation, was allowed to create the “list intended for technical cross-referencing”. You cannot harvest these emails, even if you do not intend to send advertising material.

Removal of harvested emails from marketing databases is of course correct, but insufficient. Linux Foundation and PyTorch Foundation should remove ALL HARVESTED emails from all other databases, including from the “list intended for technical cross-referencing”.

GDPR applies not only to Linux Foundation EU, but also to PyTorch Foundation which operates in EU. Specifically, the advertisement spam sent by PyTorch Foundation was about conference “PyTorchCon Europe 2026” it held/is holding in Paris, France. thus clearly it operated in EU. The emails were belonging to identifiable individual (e.g. me) and EU residents (e.g. also me), thus meeting all conditions necessary to trigger GDPR protection of personal data.

I received answer from Linux Foundation, apologizing for what happened explaining a bit with: "This occurred due to an internal marketing
operations error where a list intended for technical cross-referencing was
inadvertently marked as a mailable promotional list."

There is no explanation how the "technical cross-referencing" was created, but I assume that list is result of harvesting/scrapping addresses from available sources. Email address, even publicly exposed, is personal data, according to GDPR. Public availability does not remove GDPR protection.

The PyTorch Foundation therefore did not have right to collect these addresses.

Linux Foundation in reply to me stated they ONLY remove the addresses from marketing lists. They did not confirm that they removed the addresses from "list intended for technical cross-referencing", thus I find the the answers not satisfying.

If you're a swiss resident ( or know one ... ) you can get a custom hardware design onto an ASIC for FREE !!!

You get back one chip with your design (and a bunch of others!) and some board to help bring up/testing.

Also, this is "resident", no need to be a student or at uni or anything, you just need a valid Swiss address ...

I know I might be repeating myself here because I mentioned it a few month back but this bear repeating IMHO.

https://swisschips.ethz.ch/news-and-events/tiny-tapeout-submission-form.html

PS: Can I haz boost for reach ?

@monsieuricon Nice joke, but I am afraid it might be actually true...

@geert @arnd I sent email to helpdesk at korg, but obviously it's not korg issue.
IMO, harvesting emails and creating such database of involuntary subscribers by Linux Foundation project is absolutely not acceptable. @lfeurope @linuxfoundation should be THE example in standards for data privacy and compliance.

@ablu @arnd Harvesting from Github is not particularly better...

And now I see that PyTorch Foundation has been doing this for longer - I see at least one more mailing (to the same address from kernel sources) on 4th of February.

I would write them email with a complain, but contact form on https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/contact simply does not work - clicking button "Submit" is a no-op.

I just got spam email from PyTorch Foundation / Linux Foundation to my email address used purely in Linux kernel sources and LKML. Email not passed to anyone, not even used as reply/from ever, not used on conferences (so not scan badging) so PyTorch Foundation <pytorchevents@linuxfoundation.org> apparently just grabbed it from kernel sources or kernel mailing list to create database of users for spam mailing.

Such a disappointment @lfeurope @linuxfoundation

@palmer How "low" alcohol did you get? Worth trying...

Brewing low alcohol beers is tricky, because without good amount of malt for the yeast the taste flattens and becomes boring, watery. If you ever tried low or non-alcohol beers form the store, you know what I am talking about. They are either water or even disgusting fakes of real beer.

Yet my newest brew on https://brewalot.ch/ - the Milkshake New England IPA - gets nice low 3.7% alcohol by volume at 11 *P, beautiful creamy foam, intense fruity smell and low hoppy bitterness with just a pinch of sweetness.

Om nom nom...

@jann If only there was one tree for entire kernel, where everyone would be merging and managing simultaneously... if only ever someone invented a non-distributed revision control system which would help in achieving that. That distributed thing is also so annoying!

I just finished updating Ansible scripts for the new 64x core AWS instance and it is already happy building mainline Linux kernel maintainer trees!

Thanks to #Qualcomm for sponsoring the machine.

@ljs @lwn @corbet For specific details you would need to go to @monsieuricon rants and emails (or other kernel maintainers trying to run their own mailservers... discussed few times recently on IRC), but in overview: Google and Microsoft in order to protect their email users with lowest possible cost on their side, block entire networks without possibility to challenge or improve it by blocked mail admin. Your IP history of not-sending spam does not even matter - they will block it and don't care.

For a few days already sending emails from korg to anyone @outlook.com is blocked by Microslop.

@corbet @lwn Yes, of course you are right. I even had the same thoughts later - objective news credibility hurt plus possible lawsuits.

@lwn I am in the process of migrating my @kernel.org email setup away from Gmail to Fastmail. Not because I have trouble sending email. I can send easily... the problem is people won't be able to send to me.

I already was not subscribed to most of the kernel mailing lists and used lei/public-inbox. Now I dropped remaining few and move to korgalore for these (workflows, ksummit etc): https://korgalore.docs.kernel.org/

In case you missed the announcement:
Both - Google/Gmail and Microsoft/Outlook - probably should be considered as evil and non-cooperative email providers.

Our decentralized workflow met reality of big monopolies caring only about themselves. Basically Google and Microsoft (lack of) response is actively impacting kernel development in a negative way.

I know this post will be ignored, so how about removing Google and Microsoft @LWN Kernel Development Statistics, so they will notice the problem?

@monsieuricon Minneapolis? US? No, no, nope, heck no.

Who would think that removing myself from Linux kernel maintainers was such a good feeling. :)

Naaah, I'm a bit joking, just a proper thing to do instead of hoarding maintainers entry and not replying to emails.

@trini @hzulla That "standard way" was actually developed by someone, e.g. company or hobbyists, so cost money/time. Lack of such investment is not a scandal. It's really harmful language, because it suggests there is here some sort of malice or incompetence or just negligence. Basically it feels like years of mine and your work were part of that negligence. But no.

Our choices or economies are driven by demand and there was no demand for generic bootable ARM phone or laptop. Demand was for a cheap phone or laptop. There are BTW reasons why there is no x86 (laughing at Intel Atom) in embedded, IoT or phone/tablet market. That "general purpose bootloader and OS install" comes with a cost and there was and there is no demand for it.

Scandal would be if someone could not even develop that "general purpose bootloader and OS install", because of vendor lockdown. This is actually partially true for mobile market due to secure boot restrictions, but not for arm64 laptops, not for embedded/IoT.