[Kde-accessibility] SSML and the GPL

[Gary Cramblitt]

Bill Haneman mentioned there might be licensing issues with VoiceXML in one of 
the other threads.  As maintainer of KTTSD, this immediately concerned me.

We plan to provide Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) support in KTTSD.  
(Sometimes we say we plan to support VoiceXML, but in reality, since KTTSD is 
a speech *output* subsystem, we actually plan to support SSML, which is part 
of VoiceXML.)  The SSML spec is at

  http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/#AppF

which links to the Voice Browser patents disclosure page here

  http://www.w3.org/2001/09/voice-disclosures.html

There is an article by Jonathan Eisenzopf here

  http://www.developer.com/voice/print.php/1565321

which seems to imply there are some licensing encumberances regarding 
VoiceXML.  It isn't clear to me whether these encumberances apply to SSML or 
not.  If they do, it could be a violation of the GPL (and Debian policy) to 
use SSML in KTTSD.

IANAL, nor am I a GPL expert.  If there are license encumberances regarding 
use of SSML in KTTSD, I'd like to determine that now before we get too far 
down the road.  Can anyone shed some light on this or advise us how to 
proceed?

-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)
KDE Text-to-Speech Maintainer
http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/index.php