Re: [orca-list] Announcing the OpenTTS project, a fork of speech-dispatcher

[A <avalon friendofpooh com>]

Who's project lead or is there a committee? Sorry but it is not
obvious from the announcement who's having the final word on
decisions.

Thanks.

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 4:07 AM, Luke Yelavich <themuso ubuntu com> wrote:
> I am writing to announce a fork of speech-dispatcher, the open source text-to-speech framework, initially 
> developed by Brailcom as a part of the freebsoft project, http://www.freebsoft.org. The fork also includes 
> other important components of the speech stack, including speechd-up, the connector between speakup and 
> speech-dispatcher, and the speech-dispatcher java bindings. As you may have guessed from the subject, the 
> fork is now called OpenTTS. OpenTTS refers to both the speech server, API and documentation, as well as the 
> umbrella project as a whole. The other projects mentioned above have also been given new names, speechd-up 
> is now known as OSpeakup, and speechd-java is now known as OpenTTS-java.
>
> Why Fork Speech Dispatcher and Related Projects?
>
> One of the fundamental freedoms granted by the GPL is the freedom to publish one's modifications to the 
> source code of a software product. ÂSometimes, such publication takes the form of a fork, in which the 
> modified product is developed separately from the original. In this case, we've chosen to make forks of 
> software initially produced by the Brailcom group. We'll describe our reasons for doing that below.
>
> The Brailcom group had a great idea. ÂThey wanted to provide a system or user-level service to control 
> synthetic speech. ÂThat was Speech Dispatcher. They created libraries to ease the task of communicating 
> with that service, so that it would be possible for programmers to speech-enable their applications , 
> simply by calling output functions provided by one of these libraries. ÂFor several years, Brailcom 
> actively maintained and promoted Speech Dispatcher and the software associated with it. They innovated, and 
> the community at large was slow to adopt.
>
> Over time, projects within the accessibility community began to embrace Speech Dispatcher. ÂIt is now the 
> preferred speech synthesis backend of the Orca screenreader. The Speakup screenreader can control many 
> software-based text-to-speech engines with the help of Speech Dispatcher and a small connector program. One 
> advantage of that strategy is that Orca and Speakup can cooperatively use the same text-to-speech engine. Â
> The key point is that many projects have adopted Speech Dispatcher, to a greater or lesser extent.
>
> As time passed, the tables turned. The most recent official release of Speech Dispatcher was made in the 
> summer of 2008. ÂThe developers began taking less and less of a role in the project. ÂThe source code moved 
> from a CVS repository to git in 2009. ÂDuring much of that year, active development took place in a 
> repository hosted by Luke Yelavich. ÂMr. Yelavich even produced several unofficial "release candidate" 
> versions of Speech Dispatcher. Unfortunately, the official release process is stalled. In an effort to 
> clarify the current status of the software, members of the community contacted Brailcom. Replies to these 
> requests for information were somewhat non-committal. ÂIn effect, Brailcom stated that they were interested 
> in developing Speech Dispatcher, but they had no current plans.
>
> That, in short, is why we forked. ÂMembers of the open-source accessibility community need and want an 
> actively-developed speech framework. The OpenTTS project hopes to fulfill that need by carrying forward the 
> vision set forth by Brailcom.
>
> The OpenTTS.org website is now live, although there is not much there at the moment. The site will be 
> expanded in the near future to add areas for documentation, and feature specification tracking, to help 
> developers better outline and indicate what the next release of OpenTTS will contain. You will also find a 
> link to our mailing lists, where you can discuss OpenTTS development.
>
> We welcome all contributors from the community who wish to help us further develope the OpenTTS framework, 
> and encourage any interested contributors to join the opentts-dev mailing list. To get more information on 
> this list, or other lists relating to OpenTTS, please go to http://lists.opentts.org. We also especially 
> welcome any Brailcom staff who wish to contribute to the project.
>
> I plan to announce the focus for OpenTTS development over the next 6 months very soon, and will do so on 
> the opentts-dev mailing list (see above), and the website, so please stay tuned for more information. 
> Should you have any questions, please feel free to subscribe to the opentts-users mailing list, and ask 
> away. Commonly asked questions will be put up on the website for all to read.
>
> Finally, I'd like to thank Chris Brannon and William Hubbs for their hard work so far in helping get things 
> off the ground, particularly with code cleanup and re-organisation. I would also like to thank all of those 
> in the community who supported going ahead with the fork, you know who you are.
>
> I sincerely hope that from here on out, we can create a text to speech framework that can rival those 
> available for proprietary operating systems, as well as creating a framework that all application 
> developers feel comfortable working with. Text to speech is important for more than just those with a 
> disability, it is very useful for many other people for many different tasks. Lets give them a reason to 
> want to use it.
>
>
> Luke Yelavich
> OpenTTS project lead.
>
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