[Opentts-dev] Speech-dispatcher, OpenTTS, and the outcome of my discussion with Brailcom staff.

[Luke Yelavich]

Hi all,
As some of you are aware, I was in Prague this past week, attending an 
Ubuntu/Canonical distro sprint event. During the week, I was fortunate to meet 
up with Brailcom staff to talk about speech-dispatcher, and the community, 
including contribution to speech-dispatcher, the fork, and the way forward. 
This may turn out to be a lengthy email, as it has taken me some time to write 
it, ensuring that I get my thoughts straight. I am sending this mail to both 
the speechd and opentts-dev lists, to cover both communities. I don't see the 
need to email any lists outside these two, as those who are most interested in 
these projects are likely subscribed to one of these lists. If my points about 
the discussion are not clear, I'd appreciate it if either Hynek, Boris, or Jan 
could reply to clarrify anything that I may have mis-interpreted from our 
discussions. Jan, you did very well in attempting to convey your thoughts about 
various points of discussion, but I may have mis-understood you,
  so clarrification would be most welcome, if necessary.


Discussion about the contribution page on the Freebsoft website

I asked for clarrification about firstly the coding style requirements, and the 
contribution agreement form that is not yet available. From what I remember 
from the discussion, Jan mentioned that they try to follow the GNU coding 
style, but generally, as long as the code is readable, and works, coding style 
is not so much of an issue. Brailcom, feel free to clarrify. The contribution 
agreement form hasn't been put up yet, because there has not yet been anybody 
who has approached Brailcom to discuss things. If enough people wish to become 
regular contributors, Brailcom will update the site with appropriate forms to 
be filled etc.


Responding to patches, and bug tracker.wiki

Brailcom will certainly attempt to encorporate all patches submitted from the 
community. As to whether or not they will respond, I'll have to defer to 
Jan/Hynek again, because I can't quite remember what their answer was, and I 
don't want to say something totally incorrect, so clarrification from 
Hynek/Jan/Boris would once again be appreciated. I did ask them about getting 
git commits to be posted to a mailing list, and I think they said they would 
look into it. As for bug tracking et al, I didn't ask them about that, as I 
forgot, but I am sure they could ensure that the bug tracker is easier to find, 
and is usable and useful for filing and tracking bugs. As far as I understand 
it, their entire site is wiki-like, so having a wiki area probably wouldn't be 
to much of a problem either.


I think that covers the important bits. Feel free to fire away with specific 
questions, and I'll try to answer them, and I'd ask Brailcom to help clarify 
points and questions people raise as well. I will be resigning from the fork, 
as I am satisfied that speech-dispatcher development can continue with enough 
community involvement, and also knowing that Brailcom have other plans on the 
horizon, pending funding approval helps further the TTSAPI and text to speech 
API standards cause on *NIX.

If anybody wishes to continue with the fork, I will be happy to help with basic 
administratino tasks till the domain is up for expiry, then I'll be happy to 
transfer it to whom ever wants it. My focus now will be taking some of the 
better work we have done in opentts, and porting those patches to 
speech-dispatcher. Its unfrotunate that we have duplicated so much work, but 
once we have the better code fixes and ideas moved over, then development from 
the community should be able to continue a pace.

THis email has been written over several days, and I'm at the point where I 
couldn't really be bothered writing any more. I am sure we can resolve the last 
little bits via email.

Luke
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