[DECtalk] DECTalk licensing etc

[Kyle]

This is what I really don't like about proprietary code and companies 
controlling software and firmware. The arts actually suffer from much of 
this as well. You know things are pretty messed up legally when authors 
themselves have no right to give away, sell, or do whatever they want 
with what they wrote, and it's even worse when they don't even know who 
has the right to make those types of decisions. The paperwork is 
probably enough to let us walk on it all the way to Mars. This is where 
I am forced to agree with Josh when he says that it's all legal horse 
hockey. Well, we can band together and try to seek the power who has the 
right to license the software, or we can just be happy that it's 
available, build and use it, have fun with it, mirror it somewhere in 
case Microsoft gets a takedown notice and does what they like to do, 
take it down. Legally we can't put it in distros, make speech-dispatcher 
work better with it, anything like that, but at least we can use it as 
long as it isn't taken down. Actually, maybe we should hope for a 
takedown notice. Although this sounds like a bad thing in general, it 
would at least give those of us who want to see this code liberated a 
point of contact. After negotiations, the copyright holder of course can 
withdraw the takedown notice, and we could get back to enjoying DECTalk 
in all its hopefully open source glory at that point. Until things 
change though, I will speak no more on this licensing issue, and will 
just be happy that I am able to play with it and use it, and will surely 
promote the DECTalk software as an option for those who need software 
speech that can work with speech-dispatcher and does not cause pain or 
other issues when heard. Thanks Tom and all for making this available to 
those who want and/or need it.

~Kyle