[DECtalk] Software DECtalk availability (was Re: using dectalk with orca in ubuntu)

[Miguel Villagomez]

Hi Jason,
According to Dean Blazie, when fellow list member Jake Gross inquired which
version of DECtalk his company is using, they are using a software version
that was last modified in 2023.
It wouldn't surprise me if they’re using DECtalk version 4.99, which is the
version from GitHub. The last GitHub commit was made 2 months ago, as of
this writing.

On Sat, Feb 3, 2024, 5:26 PM Jason J.G. White via Dectalk <
dectalk at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:

> Thank you, Josh. I think Mr. Blazie is a credible source, and of course,
> his company would have been in communication with the new DECtalk owner
> for commercial licencing reasons.
>
> In the recent past, and perhaps currently, DECtalk has been receiving
> free maintenance and enhancement from a community of people who
> evidently have the necessary expertise. It will be interesting to find
> out whether the new company decides to let that work continue. If
> they're planning to allow it to be downloaded for certain non-commercial
> uses, then it may indeed be in their interests to leave it open to bug
> reports and code contributions. Of course, they may adopt an entirely
> different strategy.
>
> I am interested in contributing bug reports, at least, and if I could
> fix any of the issues (such as mispronunciations), then I would
> contribute those changes too.
>
> Any significant, long-term maintenance will require people with the
> right expertise, some of whom have obviously contributed a lot of work
> to it in recent years. My understanding is that any non-trivial work on
> it would require a specialized academic background in computer science,
> software engineering, computational linguistics and digital signal
> processing, as well as considerable software development experience. I
> don't have any of that background.
>
> If you're interested in reading more, I found this paper on DECtalk to
> be informative.
>
>
> ftp://eddie.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/DEC/DTJ/DTJK01/DTJK01PF.PDF
>
> On 3/2/24 15:49, Josh Kennedy wrote:
> > Brian Blazie said that the new owners of dectalk  said that we blind
> people can use it as long as it is for our own personal useand is not used
> in a commercial product. If you want to use it in a commercial product, you
> have to license it. but we are allowed to use it for free for our own
> personal use  Brian Blazie of Blazie Engineering told me this.
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On Feb 3, 2024, at 10:45, Jason J.G. White via Dectalk <
> dectalk at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> 
> >>> On 3/2/24 10:18, Bryan Mckinnish wrote:
> >>> How can I get dectalk to work with orca in ubuntu mate?
> >>>
> >>> Also, what github address would I have to use to get it if it's
> prebuilt?
> >>>
> >> Actually, I wouldn't download it from anywhere at the moment. There is
> apparently a new company with rights to DECtalk now, so the best strategy
> would be to wait a while until we find out officially about its
> availability to blind users of Linux. The matter was recently raised on the
> Orca mailing list.
> >>
> >> If I were making the decision today, I wouldn't download anything.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
> >> https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
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