Re: Open vs proprietary LLMs

Hi,

On 8/25/26 5:52 PM, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

[Training exclusively on Debian resources]

>> The training set would be too small to argue that copyrights are
>> sufficiently diluted that we can ignore licenses (which is a dangerous
>> position that we should not adopt), so code generation is out.

> Code generation is not out, there is nothing very specific to Debian,
> and you can take a strong model and add a RAG layer for Debian specific
> data, documentation etc.

The "take a strong model" bit is key here: it requires us to import a 
binary blob that is not reproducible for us, so that doesn't satisfy the 
criteria from Wookey's question.

There is no model that satisfies these criteria, and building one is not 
an LLM (lacking the "large" aspect), so its use would be limited to 
search indexing and almost-verbatim reproductions of code.

Search indexing might be useful, but lossy reproduction of code is worse 
than useless, because it still requires review effort but does not even 
launder copyright under the most benevolent interpretation of the law.

    Simon