[DECtalk] legality of dectalk, II

Josh Kennedy joshknnd1982 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 18 18:19:16 EDT 2019


Unfortunately, when I contacted speech-fx inc, they just told me it would cost $9000 or more. And when I told them I would be giving a decTalk product away as freeware, just to see what they would say, the guy at speech-fx inc, Rodger Dudley, said it would then cost $15000 or more. When I wrote back and said that such a price was redimulous because decTalk is 30-plus year old software… I have not heard anything back from him since on the matter and I emailed 2 or 3 times since then, getting no reply from Rodger Dudly of speech-fx inc. Honestly I don’t think he really cares about the blind or disabled person on social security using decTalk to sing, with their screen reader, or whatever they use it for. Because if he and speech-fx did care, they would have offered to sell me a version of decTalk for screen readers at a reasonable price say, $15 or so. They don’t even support android, claim decTalk is only sapi4, and they still insist on supporting windows ce when clearly most people moved on to IOS or android. Rodger flat out said we do not support android and have no plans for an android version of DecTalk. I think they are just sitting on the patent. So fine then, if they want to be that way then I’ll just use it without their permission as the NVDA addon that I already have. It works good, the speak-windows work good, the sapi5 version that Rodger claims does not exist works ok. I even asked him to make a special exception so that blind and disabled people can use decTalk, the older versions, for personal noncommercial use. I got no reply whatsoever from Mr. Dudley. Someone should take them to court over this, but most of us cannot afford that because most of us are on social security and can’t afford that. 

Josh


Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Jayson Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2019 17:57
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] legality of dectalk, II

Hi,

Much as I'd like to say this is true, that's just his thoughts on the matter. I assume the DECtalk intellectual property is owned by Speech-FX, and if that's the case, only they can legally make such a declaration, no one else.

Jayson

On 7/18/2019 5:41 PM, Josh Kennedy wrote:
Hi,
I found this interesting post back in the archives of this list.
 
http://bluegrasspals.com/pipermail/dectalk/2014-July/003897.html
 
so is this true? DecTalk is open for all? As long as its an older version not licensed by speech-fx inc or fonixTalk? 
 
Josh
 
 
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
 


_______________________________________________
Dectalk mailing list
Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bluegrasspals.com/pipermail/dectalk/attachments/20190718/1fe4251d/attachment.html>


More information about the Dectalk mailing list