[Kde-accessibility] SSML and the GPL

[Kenneth Wimer]

* Gary Cramblitt <garycramblitt at comcast.net> [Oct 30. 2004 18:26]:
> 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.
> 

I am not an expert either, but if you read the whole page (the second
one) you will find the fiollowing sentence in BOLD print

"As a result, there are no known impediments to Royalty Free
implementations of the W3C Speech Interface Framework specifications."

Bye,
Kenneth

-- 
SUSE LINUX - a Novell business
-------------------------------------------------------------
Scheinbare Rechtschreibfehler beruhen auf einer individuellen
Rechtschreibreform