[DECtalk] Report of a successful use of dectalk with graphical Linux.

[Kyle]

joshknnd1982 at gmail.com staggered into view and mumbled:
> And don't forget about the people who made the new espeak variants like bobby and betty. You know they sound identical to decTalk voices when they read talk or say stuff. Those 70 or so year old decTalk employees will be coming out of the woodwork any day now to collect their huge sums of money. After all, how dare you make espeak variants which are copying our decTalk names and formant algorithms!! Yep, legal paranoia.


Making open source code that implements a speech synthesizer that sounds 
like a DECTalk is not a legal issue. Using real DECTalk source code to 
build into the DECTalk binary that runs natively is a potential issue, 
as the LICENSE file indicates that if we don't have a written license 
from Fonix or an authorized sublicenser, we are not allowed to use the 
code. Period. This is the permission and authorization we need so that 
DECTalk can be tecnically considered to be open source and we can 
legally use it.


As I said, I don't personally care what the LICENSE file says. However, 
I'm also not trying to include it in a software project or a 
distribution, and I'm also not trying to redistribute or modify it. Most 
likely, each individual is OK just building it and using it with the 
generic speech-dispatcher module or for making recordings or whatever. 
But there are certainly licensing issues to consider, so if the current 
copyright holder wants us to be able to use it or simply doesn't care if 
we do, a valid open source license must be granted to cover all the 
legal bases.

~Kyle