Re: Proposal -- Interpretation of DFSG on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Models

Stefano Zacchiroli <[email protected]> Thu, 15 May 2025 09:53:14 +0200

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

On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 10:51:27PM +0200, Aigars Mahinovs wrote:
> It is absolutely critical to a very specific DFSG question on what is
> the "prefered form of modification".

This is maybe a side terminological note, but note that the DFSG talks
about "source code", not "preferred form of modification". The latter
expression comes historically from the GPL, rather than DFSG (or OSD).

I'm personally attached to the notion of "preferred form". I also
believe Debian is currently interpreting "source code" as equating the
stronger notion of "preferred form"; e.g., we require to have the
non-minified versions of JavaScript bundle in main. But ML models might
be the first case in which there can conceivably be multiple "source
codes" for the same artifact (ML weights), modifiable in different ways
(e.g., fine-tuning vs re-training), which are "preferred" by different
users for different use cases.

I don't know if this justify reconsidering our stance on what "source
code" means, or our stance on the fact that we consider all types of
artifacts (source code, images, data, etc.) as being equal. I just
wanted us to keep in mind that "source code" and "preferred form of
modification" are not *necessarily* the same thing.

Cheers
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli . [email protected] . https://upsilon.cc/zack  _. ^ ._
Full professor of Computer Science              o     o   o     \/|V|\/
Télécom Paris, Polytechnic Institute of Paris     o     o o    </>   <\>
Co-founder & CSO Software Heritage            o o o     o       /\|^|/\
Mastodon: https://mastodon.xyz/@zacchiro                        '" V "'

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