Re: Proposal -- Interpretation of DFSG on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Models
Hi all,
Too busy to write response to detailed questions. But here is a quick
comment about the original proposal:
AI can be an extremely complicated matter, trying to resolve a wildcard
AI issue
in a single GR will gradually expose much more problems, making things more
and more complicated. I know that because the original proposal is exactly
the result of going through wildcard cases, simplifying things, and
eventually
distilled into a very short text -- namely, it is the most problematic
case for AI. The case in the original proposal is technically well-defined.
A side effect is that people may feel the original proposal unclear because
it does not cover all cases about AI.
The particular case in the original proposal, I believe, will follow the
Pareto's law -- that we can address >80% issues by investing a relatively
tiny effort. This is not made clear in the original proposal but I think
the "Note:" parts in the original proposal have already implied this.
=== Schrodinger's Firmware ===
Apart from that, "whether AI can enter non-free{,-firmware}" is a different
issue which derails from my simplified result (that said, different opinions
are welcome). Assume Debian disallows AI in non-free{,-firmware}, then
here is an imagined example:
1. In January, a CPU/GPU company/organization released firmware, it is
proprietary, but redistributable. Then, Debian integrates the firmware
into non-free-firmware.
2. In Feburary, the company/organization happily announced that they used
machine learning / AI in their firmware. Then, Debian has to remove the
firmware due to policy violation.
3. In March, Debian start to worry about the remaining black-box blobs in
the non-free{,-firmware} sections, because the blobs have to be removed
once there is any news that acknowledges AI/ML usage inside -- we are
dealing with Schrodinger's cats.
I insist on my own opinion to stay neutral towards non-free{,-firmware}, and
delay the non-free{,.*} issue for future investigation. It derails from
the most
problematic case that I care about in the original proposal, and will add
complication to the GR, and discussion length.
On 4/19/25 13:56, M. Zhou wrote:
===============================================================================
Proposal A: "AI models released under open source license without original
training data or program" are not seen as DFSG-compliant.
===============================================================================
The "AI models released under open source license without original training
data or program", a particular type of files as explained above, are not seen
as DFSG-compliant. Hence, they can not be included in the "main" section of the
Debian archive. This proposal does not specify whether the "non-free" section
of Debian archive can include those files.
This is the part to vote on. The appendixes are just supplementary
information
on how I explain this proposal. People may disagree with my rational
behind this
proposal, but as long as we converge into the same conclusion, it is
always good
to stay efficient and avoid voting on my personal opinions.
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