The Debian developer community is pursuing a General Resolution for voting on their policy around AI models.

The general resolution seeks to provide an interpretation of the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) as it pertains to artificial intelligence (AI) models. In particular, AI models that are released as open-source but their original training data are not compliant with Debian's free software principals.

The proposal submitted so far for the GR consideration is:

"AI models released under open source license without original training data or program" are not seen as DFSG-compliant.

The "AI models released under open source license without original training data or program", a particular type of files as explained above, are not seen as DFSG-compliant. Hence, they can not be included in the "main" section of the Debian archive. This proposal does not specify whether the "non-free" section of Debian archive can include those files."

[1]This Wiki page has all the details now under discussion by Debian developers.



[1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2025/vote_002