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 <them...@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. Sometimes, > 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. They wanted to provide a system or > user-level service to control synthetic speech. That 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. For 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. It 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. 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. The developers began taking less > and less of a role in the project. The source code moved from a CVS > repository to git in 2009. During much of that year, active development took > place in a repository hosted by Luke Yelavich. Mr. 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. In effect, Brailcom stated that they were interested in > developing Speech Dispatcher, but they had no current plans. > > That, in short, is why we forked. Members 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. > > _______________________________________________ > Speechd mailing list > spee...@lists.freebsoft.org > http://lists.freebsoft.org/mailman/listinfo/speechd > -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility