The choices are oddly and not consistently worded. "Ban LLM contributions from Debian via Social Contract", "A cautious approach to generative AI", "Debian is created by humans" and "Avoid the use of LLM: climate destruction is a deal breaker" all in one list? Sounds like several people wrote them and did not agree on the form.
> Sounds like several people wrote them and did not agree on the form
Of course several people wrote different position statements to vote on.
Did you expect one Debian developer to cook up half a dozen possible stances he is not even personally invested in? Are you constantly surprised that election programs of different parties are worded differently (and use different fonts)?
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick! How difficult should it be? If someone sends you code that is well documented and easy to understand, you accept. I someone sends you code that is bad or incomprehensible, you reject it.
Who the f*ck cares who made it? A monkey could have made it for all I care. If it does what it claims to do, and I understand how, it's all good.
No, the copyright issue is nonsense. That is handled by contract where the contributor is responsible, alternatively, by code submissions of smaller size where copyright loses its meaning, or just base your project in a jurisdiction where it is a non issue.
For 99.99% of the open source projects potential copyright violations is a complete non-issue.
Copyright IS an issue to Debian, and always has been for the last 30 years or so. They are, rightfully so, extremely picky when it comes to respecting copyright and licensing. It is the 0.01%.
> Who the f*ck cares who made it? A monkey could have made it for all I care. If it does what it claims to do, and I understand how, it's all good.
Copyright laws do care. As an example one can send a patch claiming its their own but because they had do it under their employer duty, the copyright might well be associated to their employer rather than them individually. Does the patch does what it claims to? Surely. Is that a copyright infringement? DEFINITELY SO.
The copyright rationale for the first proposition (Choice 1: Ban LLM contributions from Debian via Social Contract):
> 1. Copyright
> -------------
>
> LLM output has very unclear legal status: it may be possible to copyright on its own merits, or not; it may be affected by all of the licenses and copyrights in the training data, or not.
> Debian Policy and the DFSG require absolute clarity for licensing and copyright[1][2]. Software and other contributions written conventionally by humans with unclear copyright or license status are not allowed in Debian; LLM output should not have a special exception to this.
This rationale states if there is doubt about the copyright of the code, it not suitable for inclusion. Until I guess LLM output get a clarification regarding who is the author of its output.
Of course several people wrote different position statements to vote on.
Did you expect one Debian developer to cook up half a dozen possible stances he is not even personally invested in? Are you constantly surprised that election programs of different parties are worded differently (and use different fonts)?
Who the f*ck cares who made it? A monkey could have made it for all I care. If it does what it claims to do, and I understand how, it's all good.
No, the copyright issue is nonsense. That is handled by contract where the contributor is responsible, alternatively, by code submissions of smaller size where copyright loses its meaning, or just base your project in a jurisdiction where it is a non issue.
For 99.99% of the open source projects potential copyright violations is a complete non-issue.
> Who the f*ck cares who made it? A monkey could have made it for all I care. If it does what it claims to do, and I understand how, it's all good.
Copyright laws do care. As an example one can send a patch claiming its their own but because they had do it under their employer duty, the copyright might well be associated to their employer rather than them individually. Does the patch does what it claims to? Surely. Is that a copyright infringement? DEFINITELY SO.
The copyright rationale for the first proposition (Choice 1: Ban LLM contributions from Debian via Social Contract):
> 1. Copyright
> -------------
>
> LLM output has very unclear legal status: it may be possible to copyright on its own merits, or not; it may be affected by all of the licenses and copyrights in the training data, or not.
> Debian Policy and the DFSG require absolute clarity for licensing and copyright[1][2]. Software and other contributions written conventionally by humans with unclear copyright or license status are not allowed in Debian; LLM output should not have a special exception to this.
This rationale states if there is doubt about the copyright of the code, it not suitable for inclusion. Until I guess LLM output get a clarification regarding who is the author of its output.
This is wishful thinking for any project of Debian’s size. You not wanting to deal with it doesn’t mean that people won’t get sued.