[License-review] Adapting the license-review process to AI

[Josh Berkus]

On 9/1/24 05:53, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> - What new challenges do you expect to see in reviewing these licenses?

I see three major challenges:

1. We'll need to review TOS for types of content which are not subject 
to copyright law (e.g. collections of model weights).  To date, all of 
the license eval on this list has been within the framework of copyright 
law.  I suspect that I lot of us would need some education on how to 
evaluate non-copyright terms; I know that I will.

2. We will also need to evaluate whether certain types of content (model 
weights, training process docs, etc.) require any clarification of the 
OSD for compliance.

3. The OSAID certifies complete software systems, not just licensing 
documents.  So we will need to verify that the terms submitted are 
actually applied to the software available.  To date, L-R has operated 
by waiting for folks to submit documents to us; the OSAID will require 
us -- or someone else -- to perform a compliance review.

 > - Do you recommend any changes to the process in light of potential 
new challenges?

Given the above, I'm pretty sure that we need some kind of organized 
digital tracking of verifications.

We also might consider splitting the work.  I believe that L-R is going 
to be much better equipped to evaluate whether the various documents 
(licenses and terms) comply with the OSD, and leave it to another team 
(staff, maybe?) to evaluate whether the AI software actually uses all 
approved documents.

Finally, I think we'll want to list approved documents which are not 
software licenses separately on the website from the software licenses.

-- 
Josh Berkus