• withdrawing Proposal A -- Interpretation of DFSG on Artificial Intellig

    From M. Zhou@21:1/5 to All on Thu May 8 19:10:01 2025
    Hi all,

    I decided to withdraw the proposal A: "AI models released under DFSG-compatible license without original training data or program" are not seen as DFSG-compliant.

    Based on the overall discussions and feedbacks, we as a community is underprepared
    to vote on this. Even if we vote, it is leading to a less convincing result. According to the constitution, I think it is completely fine to withdraw the proposal
    and cancel it temporarily, and get back when we are ready for it.

    However, if the other proposals suddenly get enough sponsors in the last minute,
    the proposal A has to be there. So this is a "conditional" withdraw, and I'm expecting
    the GR to be canceled.

    Some of my comments:

    * People holding different opinions have too short time to prepare (although I
    already signaled everyone long time ago that I'll press the start button).
    The lack of other options can make the result less convincing.

    So if anybody is willing to propose option B,C,D..., next time, please continue
    working on your proposal and let me know. I'll coordinate the time to press start
    button to make sure none of you have to rush.
    As usual, I'll track everything of my proposal A here publically:
    https://salsa.debian.org/lumin/gr-ai-dfsg

    * My initial thought about this GR is just to address the conceptual
    interpretation. But the real implication of this conceptual GR is what makes the
    audience unconfident on what to vote.

    To do such analysis, it would take some time to do a rough archive scan to
    figure out the packages that may be affected by this GR. Do you know any tool
    that can help me scan the whole Debian archive (source) with the following
    customized rules?

    for each source package in debian archive {
    for each file in source package {
    if it is plain text file {
    if is .json .xml etc and contains more than 1000 numbers {
    ask for human check
    } else {
    continue
    }
    } else { (binary file)
    if it typically/potentially contains numerical array, like .safetensors,
    .pth, .ckpt, .npy, .npz {
    ask for human check
    } else if known-to-be-not-a-machine-learning-model, like .pdf {
    skip
    } else {
    unknown binary, ask for human check
    }
    }
    }

    If we do not have such a tool, I'll do it myself. Once I get the file list,
    I'll see whether I need volunteers to distribute the workload.

    * Most people have an assumption that the "pre-trained models" are with good
    faith and trustworthy. But is it? I'm going to create a simple demonstration
    on how to implant backdoor in a neural network using my poorest hardware
    (raspberry pi). Everything I need for this demonstration is already in main
    section (both deep learning framework and dataset). I want to know
    how people would fix the backdoored toy model by modifying the matrices and
    vectors, when the matrices happens to be the "preferred form of
    modification".

    Debian is at a relatively bottom position in the supply chain. If Debian
    ships a model in main and see it a "preferred form of modification", any
    security or trustworthiness issue exposed afterwards may potentially nuke
    a reverse supply chain.


    I do not believe I can fill in those blanks within a short time. Maybe a couple of months are needed.

    BTW, I cannot attent DebConf. If anybody wants to host some relevant discussion there, please let me know what I can do online.

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  • From Russ Allbery@21:1/5 to M. Zhou on Thu May 8 19:40:01 2025
    "M. Zhou" <[email protected]> writes:

    I decided to withdraw the proposal A: "AI models released under DFSG-compatible license without original training data or program" are
    not seen as DFSG-compliant.

    Based on the overall discussions and feedbacks, we as a community is underprepared to vote on this. Even if we vote, it is leading to a less convincing result. According to the constitution, I think it is
    completely fine to withdraw the proposal and cancel it temporarily, and
    get back when we are ready for it.

    Thank you for all your work on this, and please don't consider this any
    sort of fault on your part. This happens a lot; people don't really engage until a GR is actually proposed, and even with the best of preparations, sometimes that surfaces a bunch of opinions that didn't show up before
    then.

    I think this is the right decision and I also hope it doesn't discourage
    you from continuing to work on this. I don't think anyone is saying that
    we shouldn't have this conversation and a vote, only that we (myself very
    much included) are realizing that we hadn't actually thought this through
    as thoroughly as we had thought.

    --
    Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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  • From M. Zhou@21:1/5 to Russ Allbery on Thu May 8 19:50:01 2025
    Hi Russ,

    On Thu, 2025-05-08 at 10:33 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
    "M. Zhou" <[email protected]> writes:

    Thank you for all your work on this, and please don't consider this any
    sort of fault on your part. This happens a lot; people don't really engage until a GR is actually proposed, and even with the best of preparations, sometimes that surfaces a bunch of opinions that didn't show up before
    then.

    I think this is the right decision and I also hope it doesn't discourage
    you from continuing to work on this. I don't think anyone is saying that
    we shouldn't have this conversation and a vote, only that we (myself very much included) are realizing that we hadn't actually thought this through
    as thoroughly as we had thought.

    Thanks for the encouraging words! We are learning from this process and figuring out overlooked aspects. I'm quite optimistic when writing
    the withdraw and there is not a single trace of "giving up" in my mind.

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  • From Mo Zhou@21:1/5 to M. Zhou on Thu May 8 22:30:02 2025
    On 5/8/25 13:48, M. Zhou wrote:
    Thanks for the encouraging words! We are learning from this process and figuring out overlooked aspects. I'm quite optimistic when writing
    the withdraw and there is not a single trace of "giving up" in my mind.
    A quite interesting quote from FSF's website:

    "With regards to the most debated topic in this area of free software,
    the FSF's position is that a free (as in freedom) machine learning
    application should include training data. Not including this in the
    criteria would render it impossible to use, study, modify, and share
    machine learning applications to the fullest extent possible."

    Source: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-at-fosdem-2025

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  • From M. Zhou@21:1/5 to G. Branden Robinson on Mon May 12 15:10:01 2025
    On Thu, 2025-05-08 at 15:58 -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:

    I would advise you to stick to a conventional withdrawal of your ballot option.  It seems likely to me that with at least one other option
    having already been withdrawn,[1] the GR will dissolve per §A.2.4.

    To avoid ambiguity here, I confirm that I'm sticking to the standard
    withdraw process defined in the constitution.

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  • From Kurt Roeckx@21:1/5 to M. Zhou on Tue May 27 19:20:01 2025
    On Thu, May 08, 2025 at 01:05:08PM -0400, M. Zhou wrote:
    Hi all,

    I decided to withdraw the proposal A: "AI models released under DFSG-compatible
    license without original training data or program" are not seen as DFSG-compliant.

    Based on the overall discussions and feedbacks, we as a community is underprepared
    to vote on this.

    Do you intend to make a new proposal?


    Kurt

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  • From M. Zhou@21:1/5 to Kurt Roeckx on Tue May 27 20:30:01 2025
    Sure but that is not going to happen soon.

    We need time to prepare. And the time for the next round is TBD.

    On 5/27/25 1:17 PM, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
    On Thu, May 08, 2025 at 01:05:08PM -0400, M. Zhou wrote:
    Hi all,

    I decided to withdraw the proposal A: "AI models released under DFSG-compatible
    license without original training data or program" are not seen as DFSG-compliant.

    Based on the overall discussions and feedbacks, we as a community is underprepared
    to vote on this.
    Do you intend to make a new proposal?


    Kurt


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