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Re: Proposal Alternative: A Model Can Be a Preferred form of Modification



Creating two separate (but equal) definitions in the community is IMHO in long term detrimental to clarity of software freedom.

That is why I would rather see the Debian project first express agreement with the OSI position (as a strategic decision) and later additionally provide guidance on how to interpret DFSG in that context - as a technical/supporting documentation that implements this strategic decision. Specifically this guidance would need to state that training data of a AI model is *not* considered to be the "source code" of the model, but rather an intermediate build artifact from the real source that is the "training data information". And noting that having the training model be in a form that is suitable for further refinement is required to satisfy the requirement to technically allow further modifications and derived works.

IMHO voting on a strategic decision itself could be a thing that can be done immediately, but the technical part would need more work and discussion.

On Tue, 6 May 2025 at 00:30, Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> wrote:
>>>>> "Aigars" == Aigars Mahinovs <aigarius@debian.org> writes:

    Aigars> Another, simpler, alternative would be to vote on the Debian
    Aigars> project endorsing
    Aigars> https://opensource.org/ai/open-source-ai-definition

    Aigars> It basically translates the four freedoms into AI freedoms
    Aigars> and introduces "Data Information" as a substitute for
    Aigars> (potentially unredistributable) original training data - a
    Aigars> description of what data was used for training and how it
    Aigars> was acquired and processed. With the key that a sufficiently
    Aigars> skilled person should be able to reproduce the data and then
    Aigars> the model using this information.

I'd rank that belowe FD, so I would not propose it, but I would rank it
above Choice 1.

Here are my concerns with that definition for Debian:

* The four freedoms do not have any formal role in the DFSG. Pulling
  them in here  seems like an odd place for Debian to sign onto them.

* The definition refers to OSD rather than DFSG in terms of licenses.

* Data information makes sense to me when talking about base models. But
  data information does not guarantee that I can modify a model as part
  of a software system in practice. Perhaps in practice it does, but I
  would need to think through it more than I have already.

But if you propose that option I will second.


--
Best regards,
    Aigars Mahinovs        mailto:aigarius@debian.org
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