Re: Non-LLM example where we do not in practice use original training data

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> Wed, 07 May 2025 18:10:37 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Clint Adams <[email protected]> writes:

> On Wed, May 07, 2025 at 02:20:44PM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>Thanks for answers!  Surprisingly I now find myself agreeing that your
>>approach is reasonable and is consistent with existing Debian practices.
>>I just wish that the existing practices were more libre and more
>>consistent with documented policies, but I also think this is not the
>>popular opinion.
>
> So, let's delve deeper on the practical impact of such consistency
> or not.  Let's say we have a hypothetical package called
> gnipgnop-rattrap.  It's an accessibility tool which tracks elements
> of your face using pretrained Haar cascade classifier models, and
> based on where you look, moves the "mouse" pointer.   The models
> we ship it with have been trained solely on 75 gigabytes of images
> captured from Disney films, which are not available anywhere
> because the people who trained the models are afraid of being sued.
>
> What should Debian do?  Remove the package from the archive so no
> one can use it?  Patch it to download the models from a random
> URL which may or may not be accessible?  Construct 75 gigabytes of
> DFSG-free annotated training data to stuff into the source package?

Doesn't Aigars' reply answer that?  Assuming it wins the vote.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2025/05/msg00075.html

My reading is that if it is possible for a skilled person to re-create
an equivalent model following some description, under Aigars' proposal,
it would be permissible to have gnipgnop-rattrap in Debian main,
including the model trained on 75 gigabytes of Disney films.

That is not my preference nor what I would want to see happen, but I
think it is consistent with how Debian approach including non-free
firmware in the official installer images, and how Debian approaches
licensing on other non-source files inside packages.

/Simon

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