Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, 06 May 2025 at 13:58:57 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>>FWIW, in terms of free software ethics, I consider non-open data to be
>>"less nasty" than non-free code.
>
> Debian is unusual in the way we interpret our mission statement as
> extending to everything we distribute being Free, not just our
> executable code.
I don't think Debian is perfectly consistent in applying that principle:
for example, the text of the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) is
included in Debian packages (in 'main') and has a clearly non-free
license, and IIRC sometimes not even in debian/copyright. There are
other examples historically of similar content too, e.g., IETF RFCs and
Unicode tables. So I think there are some implicit acknowledgement from
Debian's (in)actions that non-open data like documentation or firmware
is not as evil as non-free code. Extending that approach to AI models
isn't unreasonable, although I would prefer if we didn't.
/Simon
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