Re: Signed and updated ballot option: Call the Free Software community to develop Free AI.

Sam Hartman <[email protected]> writes:

> In my mind, I consider these proposal related  because I think that if
> there is strong free AI, the objections people have to the use of AI in
> Debian will be largely addressed.

There will not be strong free AI within the immediate time frame of the
issues tht the other proposals on the ballot are trying to address, so
however desirable this may be in practice, I think this proposal is in
effect a stealth "do nothing" option with regardes to the issues the other
options are trying to address. That seems like a failure to be explicit
about its impact.

As it currently stands, I therefore think it is orthogonal to the other
options and the desire to vote for this option *and* one of the other
options will be widespread. This is a sign of a badly drafted option.

This seems fixable, though, by adding an explicit statement to this option
about what Debian should be doing about LLM output in the meantime until
this hoped-for future arrives. That statement could very well be "do
nothing and have no explicit policy" if that's what its supporters think
should be done, and I think that would still resolve the voting problem.
Then the option is an explicit "do nothing" option with a forward-looking
hopeful position statement, which feels sufficiently related to the other
options to me that voters can judge it on its merits against the other
options.

If there is disagreement among its supporters about what to do in the
interim period before strong free AI exists, that's what multiple ballot
options are for. The point of a vote is to try to resolve that
disagreement or to explicitly decide not to decide, not just leave it
unstated and unaddressed.