On 25/08/26 at 07:56 +0000, Stephan Verbücheln wrote: > On Tue, 2026-08-25 at 08:30 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > > It's useful to see LLMs as input data (or very large configuration > > files) for inference engines such as vLLM or SGLang. They are not > > executable on their own. They are actually similar to DNS blacklists: > > you need to plug them into a piece of software that will make use of > > them to provide a service. > > Does that matter? The DFSG also applies to data included in the Debian > repositories, not only to executable code. Many upstream programs > include data that has to be removed before packaging because of license > issues. > > For generated data, it is preferred by free software projects that the > code which generates the data is included in the source rather than > data itself which is hard to manually study and modify.
There are two different sets of data in the context of this discussion: 1. the model itself (the weights). It's data generated from the training data. It's clearly not the preferred form for making modifications (even if you can post-train/fine-tune). Whether that could be included in the Debian archive was the focus of the 2025 GR discussion[1]. 2. the source code created with the assistance of an AI coding agent. There, a human uses a tool (that indirectly leverages non-free data -- see (1)) to produce content in a form that is the preferred form for further modifications to it. Whether such a process is acceptable within Debian is the focus of the current GR. [1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2025/vote_002 Lucas
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