Training data access

Let me explain what concerns me about this. Suppose a majority of the people you have classified as “stakeholders”, or maybe even just the most vocal or influential ones, decide “open source AI” means, for example, that licenses of components of an AI system can prohibit distribution. Does that mean the OSI abandons its historical principles and embraces a definition of “Open Source AI” that legitimizes restrictions on distribution? This is a serious question - I am really not sure how much energy to invest in this effort and if there is any possibility that the OSI will completely ignore what “open source” historically meant at least at a high level, I don’t want to participate. I will work on my own definition of “open source AI” instead and perhaps find some likeminded collaborators.

In this regard, I note that the OSAID drafts use language that is based on the Free Software Definition and do not refer to the OSD. That might be sensible (when I was on the OSI Board I even called for replacing the OSD with the FSD :slight_smile: but given the behavior in this space, I have wondered whether this gives the OSI room to reject its historical commitment against licenses with use restrictions, since one difference between the OSD and the FSD is that the OSD borrows from the DFSG in explicitly ruling out licenses that discriminate against fields of use and fields of endeavor. As interpreted by the FSF, the FSD does as well, but this is not explicit in the FSD.

And I have to ask, who is a stakeholder? I’m not used to that term being used in discussions of FLOSS-related policy. I have no particular reason to think that I am a stakeholder, despite the great importance I personally attach to this topic. It looks to me like some of the people you consider stakeholders are representatives of companies, and individual machine learning practitioners I suppose, that have been misusing or misappropriating the term “open source” in the AI context. In the non-AI software context, would the OSI consider perpetrators of “open-washing” to be stakeholders of the Open Source Definition?