Announcing the OpenTTS project, a fork of speech-dispatcher

[Bill Cox]

Hi, Tomas.  Everyone is are very pleased with Brailcom's work on
speech-dispatcher, but as Brailcom's contract ran out, Brailcom
necessarily moved on to new projects.  Now, I for one support Brailcom
getting more contracts to do more work, and if that happens, we may
want to look at merging OpenTTS back into speech-dispatcher.  Even
better might be if Brailcom could get a contract to move forward with
it's next-generation replacement for speech-dispatcher.  It is clear
that the volunteers have enough bandwidth to move speech-dispatcher
forward, yet not enough to complete the new project to replace it.
Luke has very generously offering to move OpenTTS forward in his free
time, and as a pragmatic solution, it makes sense to let him.    Since
the fork, development has accelerated several-fold, which I think we
all agree is a good thing, but it's still nowhere near what it would
be if a couple of full time developers could be assigned to the
project.  In short, whoever has the ability to put in the hard work to
move forward most effectively should lead.  So, please consider this a
"friendly" fork, focused on the good of the community.  If Brailcom
needs some voices of support for new contracts, I think you can count
on us, as everyone here seems to be a fan of Brailcom and the
excellent work they've done.  In fact, if there is any specific action
you could recommend that I can take to help Brailcom close new
business, please let me know.

Best regards,
Bill

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 3:10 AM, Tomas Cerha <cerha at brailcom.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> just my few personal thoughts...
>
> While I respect anyone's freedom to take on the work that we started and 
> continue in a
> direction he believes is the best, I am not quite convinced that making a 
> fork is
> necessary and helpful.
>
> The announcement started by a question "Why Fork Speech Dispatcher and Related
> Projects?", but I can't find anything that would answer the question for me 
> even if I
> pretty much agree with all what was written below. ?It is true, that GPL 
> grants the
> freedom to do it, that the importance of Speech Dispatcher grew over the time 
> and that
> the non-profit organization Brailcom didn't find resources to finance the 
> development in
> the last two years. ?But I fail to find a convincing reason in these facts.
>
> Brailcom has always officially supported the work done by Luke Yelavich and 
> others. ?We
> linked Luke's git from the official Speech Dispatcher web page and we were 
> trying to
> promote this work where possible. ?We also put at least some minimal effort 
> into
> reviewing how the development continues and plan to make an official release 
> (yes,
> without being able to promise the exact date) and we constantly put 
> significant effort
> in attempts to find resources for continuation of the work and we believe we 
> will
> succeed (though, as we announced, we can not promise anything, as it does not 
> depend on
> our decision).
>
> I am just afraid, that having two projects with two names and different 
> directions will
> not be really practical. ?What particularly is the key problem in the current 
> model
> where the actual development takes place in Luke's git repo? ?I don't say it 
> is ideal,
> but maybe there is less to do to make it better, then making a fork and 
> renaming...
>
> Best regards,
>
> Tomas Cerha
>
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