[DECtalk] DECtalk TTS licensing

Mon Aug 30 13:39:58 EDT 2021

Unfortunately, eSpeak is distributed under the viral copyleft GPL V3 license.

This means that it cannot be used in conjunction with proprietary code, but there are proprietary components in my project.

eSpeak can be used as an external component, but then there is less control over it. In particular, it will not be possible to include it in the package. This is only acceptable for NVDA, where there is already a built-in eSpeak.

A similar problem with the open source RHVoice synthesizer.

In addition to DECtalk, I also researched the possibility of licensing SoftVoice and Eloquence synthesizers, but this also has not worked out yet. SoftVoice copyright holders are also unresponsive, and finding an Eloquence licensor has proven difficult.

There is a PICO TTS free synthesizer, but its speech at high speed is not as intelligible as I would like.

There is also a public domain Klatt synthesizer, but it is of too low quality.

MBROLA and Festeval/Flite synthesizers are too large and clumsy, and also not intelligible enough at high speech speeds.

If you can recommend any other compact English synthesizer that I have not named, then I would be grateful.

My synthesizer will have several built-in robotic voices for different languages with automatic voice switching, as well as support for connecting external voices for other languages or for high speech quality from the system (MS SAPI5, Android, etc.). The synthesizer will be supplied for NVDA, SAPI5 and Android Speech TTS (in the future, it is possible for macOS and Linux in a version compatible with the corresponding API).

I am currently looking for a compact robotic voice for English to embed it as the default voice for Latin script.

The synthesizer I am developing is geared towards blind professionals working with different languages. Voices will automatically switch based on script (alphabet) and language markup, for example, on web pages.

My project is non-commercial, but I am ready to buy an embedded license for my own money, if the price is reasonable for my personal budget. However, so far I cannot even establish contact with the copyright holders of the necessary technologies in order to find out the licensing conditions.

In addition, the situation is complicated by the fact that I am not from the USA. I can draw up contracts only through a non-profit organization in another country.

From: Dectalk <dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com> On Behalf Of Devin Prater
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2021 4:06 PM
To: DECtalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECtalk TTS licensing

I mean, there is ESpeak. 

Devin Prater

r.d.t.prater at gmail.com <mailto:r.d.t.prater at gmail.com> 

gemini://tilde.pink/~devinprater/

On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 12:02 PM Nikita <nikitamailings at yandex.com <mailto:nikitamailings at yandex.com> > wrote:

Hello everybody.

I am looking for an opportunity to license DECtalk software technology to develop a cross-platform multilingual speech synthesizer compatible with screen readers. First of all, on Windows and Android, and in the future, possibly Linux and macOS.

Unfortunately, I ran into the problem of being unable to contact the copyright holders of DECtalk.

SpeechFX, Inc. website does not work (speechfxinc.com <http://speechfxinc.com> ), and I am not receiving a response to message sent to the email that was previously indicated on this site (sales at speechfxinc.com <mailto:sales at speechfxinc.com> ).

I tried to contact Roger Dudley personally, who is the CEO of SpeechFX, but his addresses, which I discovered in the public sources, no longer exist.

I know that there is an available software implementation of DECtalk and even its source code is publicly available, but these are all illegal versions. I want to officially license DECtalk for my non-commercial project.

I will be very grateful if someone can suggest how else I can contact the copyright holders of DECtalk.

If you have any information, but you do not want to publish it publicly, then you can write to me directly at nikitamailings at yandex.com <mailto:nikitamailings at yandex.com> 

Best regards, Nikita.

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