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

[Karen Lewellen]

Jason,
Do you actually know the name of the new company in reference here?
I ask because I have a nonprofit organization tax insentive offer that 
might allow for a few licences.
Kare



On Sat, 3 Feb 2024, Jason J.G. White via Dectalk 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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