Hi again,
While your point about publicly funded efforts may be a fine one,
locating those owners now presents a challenge.
On the one hand companies behind solid speech synthesis, like digital
equipment corporation who branded the superior dec-talk speech have
themselves sold items to others.
my understanding from a post on another list is that in this case
Microsoft aquired nuance who owns part of Eloquence.
Additionally many in most recent years end up establishing a pattern of
abandonware. starting a project, only to stop it later.
That argument is the strongest against your date concerns.
In the early years, including 2002, speech synthesis was crafted with the
firm understanding that more often than not this technology must serve
as the eyes, ears, hands, brain, voice, or a combination of a human. It
was not a toy, not created to manage a single function and the like.
Perhaps the present of public funding, instead of volunteer efforts
allowed well trained scientists to take part. Still the resulting quality
was such that has not been managed for frankly decades.
This and the pervasive nature of this particular tool in technology
provided at least stateside by the rehab system makes securing eloquence
quite fundamental for many in this population.
Its a life fortifying tool missing in many ways, certainly missing in a
default capacitor for Linux.
So, not signing due to the alternative of seeking publicly funded
efforts, or because you feel the date is an issue, speaking personally, is
misplaced good intent.
If you do not sign, please at lease circulate.
change.org is not a fully inclusive platform meaning many with a vested
interest cannot sign, or so I am told.
Karen
On Mon, 17 May 2021, deloptes wrote:
Karen Lewellen wrote:
Hi everyone,
Sharing because while tts is indeed ??part of adaptive technology for many,
and Linux default speech synthesis is not always of the best quality, the
use of tts across devices serving the general public is ??becoming more
extensive as well.
There is an effort at change.org asking Microsoft to makes its tts engine
eloquence, open source.
https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-open-source-eti-eloquence
If this resonates, please sign and circulate. its one of those ??situations
where adaptive technology and general technology can intersect in a
positive way.
It resonates a lot - as I wrote thesis on dialogue systems and I got very
disappointed by the facts I came across. IMO all technologies that were
financed with public money (i.e. DARPA) should be made publicly available.
In fact AFAIK there is only one engine (the mother of all) that was
developed by Phillips and IBM - who knows who owns the pattents now ... I
would be surprised if Google, Microsoft and Amazon funded research
themselves.
In fact there was a Linux version of IBMs ViaVoice but was so bad and was
killed later around 2005. We are in THE MIDDLE AGES right now. Only people
got too stupid to understand.
I will no subscribed because it does not make any sense to request something
from 2002 - you/we should request everything that was publicly funded to be
available/benefitting the public or revolt.
