Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Grandon:

First, let me clear up what I think may be a misperception. We should
not assume that this product is unprofitable for its various owners. In
fact, it is precisely my dealings with a commercial wholesaler, the
legal basis behind TTSyinth, that makes me understand these voices
continue to generate solid revenue. Before they would work with me on a
contract for just a few thousand licenses, friends of Linux
accessibility advocated that this was important. Usually, their
contracts involve tens of thousands of license seats.

You should also know that I explored the prospect of recompiling to
64-bit and to newer libc++. This was not dismissed. I was simply asked
how many licenses I was prepared to buy should this be done. In other
words, give us enough money, and we'll do it.

Frankly, nothing in my experience gives me any reason to believe that
this product could be wrested from the proprietary domain anytime soon.
These guys have lots of commercial customers. AT hardly rates as a
market share.

Janina

Brandon McGinty-Carroll writes:
> Janina and list,
> I would appreciate a list of any companies of names you know who are associated with this incarnation of IBMTTS.
> It's worth a shot to see if we can contact one or all of these entities; doing nothing, as we (read that "me") have seen with speakup leads to a buggered situation.
> Janina, didn't you work with these folks a while back distributing TTSynth? Or was that someone else...
> Thanks for your help.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Brandon McGinty-Caroll
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:35:24AM +1000, Jason White wrote:
> > Janina Sajka <janina at rednote.net> wrote:
> > > Not lost. Problem is that it has a lot of owners, i.e.
> > > people/corporations who own a piece of it. Getting a rebuild, especially
> > > with enhancements, would take a firm of lawyers just to get the project
> > > started.
> > 
> > There might be lawyers associated with the free/open-source software community
> > who would work on this if it could lead to the release of the code. However,
> > any one of the aforementioned people/corporations could just say "no", or
> > demand royalties.
> > 
> > This is one way in which proprietary software dies, unfortunately.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina at rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/