Ballot option: Allow only Public/Open Source AI for contributions (was Re: Ballot Option: Allow public AI for translations)

Pirate Praveen <[email protected]> Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:36:37 +0530
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
I got some feedback privately to clarify some more things.

---updated proposal v4.0 ---

Using its power under Constitution section 4.1 (5), the project issues 
the following statement describing its current position on AI-assisted 
contributions. This statement describes the position of the project at 
the time it is adopted. That position may evolve as time passes without 
the need to resort to future general resolutions. The GR process remains 
available if the project needs a decision and cannot come to a consensus.

Preamble

LLMs and its impact on society and environment is a hugely polarizing 
debate.

In this document, we mainly look at contributions using LLMs.

LLMs have made a huge leap in language translations, but at the same 
time depending on big tech companies to provide this service is not a 
good idea. When it comes to generating code, we also need to consider 
how it weakens the idea of copyleft, unlike translations.

Enforcing copyleft requires us to depend on copyright law, if LLM 
generated code cannot be copyrighted, then LLM could be used to take out 
copyleft requirements from Free Software projects. But this is not 
something we can really control.

Basics

1. If a Free Software LLM model is run locally, we have some control 
over it (we still need to retrain it, if we want to modify it). But even 
for that level of control, the high hardware specifications required to 
run these models makes access to such hardware difficult. So we cannot 
entirely insist on running an LLM model locally, similar to not 
insisting on use of Free Hardware Designs. So we will need to 
collectively run the models to make sure everyone have access to Free 
Software models in practice.

2. Public AI is AI as public infrastructure like highways, water, or 
electricity. Public AI uses Free Software and Open Weight models. Open 
Weights refer to the final weights and biases of a trained neural 
network. These values, once locked in, determine how the model 
interprets input data and generates outputs.

Since Public AI is not a well defined term, we need a more precise 
definition. PublicAI.Co also complies with Open Source AI definition by 
OSI (https://opensource.org/ai) so we will base Public AI definition on 
Open Source AI definition.

For AI to be accessible to people, it has to be available easily to 
people, like Wikipedia or Lets Encrypt. Not for profit collaborations 
between multiple organizations and public funding is essential to keep 
it sustainable, though public funding is not a requirement. How we are 
going to fund such Public AI will evolve in the future.

So to evaluate an AI web service, we will use the definition of Open 
Source AI by OSI, but some requirements may be relaxed.

3. At this point, we don't want to insist on training data being freely 
available, similar to how we don't insist on Free Hardware Designs. The 
challenges to practically being able to use the available data should be 
factored in. Similar to how costly it would be to produce hardware from 
Free Hardware Designs, even when training data is available, huge 
computing power is required to use it practically.

This point is a specific relaxation from the Open Source AI definition.

So Public AI = Open Source AI + relaxed requirement on training data.

Guidelines

1. Translations generated by Public AI can be accepted.

2. Code / documentation generated by Publc AI can also be accepted. 
Ideally it should preserve share alike / copyleft conditions of original 
code used in training, but how copyright law evolves is not in our control.

3. Contributions (code/bug reports/patches/documentation etc) assisted 
by Public AI should be accepted.

4. Any such contributions should also follow the generally accepted 
norms for contributions like ownership and quality.

The person submitting any such contributions generated or assisted by 
Public AI should take full responsibility for its quality.

5. Any contributions using generative AI/LLM systems not matching 
requirements of Public AI will not be accepted.

References

An example to understand what Public AI looks like in practice is 
https://publicai.co, which is funded by Mozilla, the Future of Life 
Institute, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. This project is the 
inspiration and basis for this document.

---updated proposal v 3.0 ---

If you feel Open Source AI is missing in the current set of ballot 
options, I'd appreciate seconds for this option. We could still clarify 
the draft if there are ambiguities.

Summary:

The core part of this proposal is, Accept if Public AI, else reject.

Public AI = Open Source AI + relaxed requirement on training data.
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