Re: Next Steps For the Software Heritage Problem

[Simon Tournier]

Hi Ian, all,

On Tue, 18 Jun 2024 at 10:57, Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv> wrote:

> Guix is continuing to partner with SWH in spite of their continued 
> support of these violations.

Quickly because I am in the middle of a busy day. :-)

I think that LLM asks ethical and legal question that even FSF or EFF or
SFC does not provide clear answers.  (And that probably the level where
the discussion should happen.)  That’s not a light topic and we should
not rush in one definitive conclusion.

Thank you for the rise of the concern some weeks ago.  It appears to me
good that people had expressed their concerns.  And still does.
Although I am reading there or overthere an aggressive tone; useless.

Again, people behind SWH are long-term free software activists and be
sure that they do not take this concern lightly.  FYI, people of SWH are
in touch with some people from Guix to speak about all that.


1. Legal.

These license violations are your interpretation of the law and to my
knowledge nothing have been in Court, yet.

Today, it does not really matter if we (or I) share this opinion.
Because for now, it’s just an opinion.

However, no one is a lawyer here and drawing a clear line is not simple.

Thus, FWIW, I would not jump in hard conclusions based on my own opinion
because today I am not confidant enough to emit a definitive legal
position.


2. Ethical.

If we speak about ethical concerns, we need to be very cautious.  We all
share the same core of values about free software.  Then we all do not
bound these values to the same point.  Some of us extend them to some
topics, other restrict a bit.

Here the issue is that other values than the ones about free software
are dragged in the picture to emit a position.  That’s where we need to
be cautious because we need to embrace the diversity and do not morally
judge what is outside our free software project.

About SWH, FWIW, here is my moral reasoning; as you see, it is far to be
definitive.

I think that LLM/IA is morally bad in climate change context; a moral
value outside free software, BTW.  By extension, HuggingFace appears to
me morally bad.

Then, is SWH morally bad because they did a partnership with
HuggingFace?  Is it morally bad to help SWH in harvesting source code?
Well, the answers do not jump to my eyes.

An analogy could be: Am I morally bad when I use my Github account to
report bugs of free software there?  Or when I contribute to free
software hosted on Github?  Let do not drift; I am just trying to expose
that moral questions are often more complex that yes or no.

All is not 0 and 1.  There is tradeoff and balance.

Back to SWH.  I consider that free software source code is part of human
culture and it must be preserved. Preserving source code is morally
good.

Thus, I think the mission of SWH is morally good.  Because their
partnership with UNESCO in order to collect and preserve this human
culture is morally good.  Then, helping in that mission appear to me
morally good.

Moreover, being able to rescue is also morally good.  For example, in
scientific context where the trust in scientific knowledge depends on
software that vanish.  This trust appears to me vitally important.

Therefore, it appears to me very harsh to jump in definitive moral
conclusion about the SWH initiative.


All that said, back to my busy day. :-)

Cheers,
simon