[daveguy]

I agree. I think all reference datasets should be free and open source. Also, researchers shouldn't publish on datasets that are not free and open source. That is a basic requirement for repeatability.

As far as the TensorFlow API is concerned. This may be a tradeoff between speed and robustness. In order to have every operation checked every time would certainly slow down the code for general use. Probably better how-to / setup / use guides are a better solution for this (unless it is a flat out bug).