about dectalk synthesizer

[Umesh Rathore]

high josephsl and other nvda maintainers, 

please tell me what's happening with my addon submission which is dectalk speech synthesizer.

thanks!

[Joseph Lee]

Hi,

Update: we regret to inform you that the add-on in question was removed from the add-on store submission queue due to concerns about copyright.

[Umesh Rathore]

आप मुझे ये बताए कि जब वो कंपनि dec  दुनिया में है हि नहिं तो कौनसे कानून का उलंघन हो रहा है आप लोग चरचा करो इसपर 

[Joseph Lee]

Hi

DEC was acquired by Compaq, in turn acquired by HP. Ownership of DECtalk was transferred to several companies, among which is Fonix which went out of business not long ago (five or six years, if I remember correctly).

I know that some folks are using emulators to run DECtalk ROM images. This is a gray area work, meaning it could be legal in some countries but not others.

As for copyright and ownership, just because a company went out of business does not grant people the right to disassemble or emulate ROM files. At least in United States where GitHub (and in turn, Microsoft) is headquartered, copyright for works lasts a long time (up to 95 years) for some materials. If a company ceases to exist like Fonix, then overall ownership (and sometimes intellectual property) of DECtalk and related technologies should have been transferred to someone else (a company or a person). Right now we don't know who the new "owner" is, so people are creating gray area materials like ROM image dumps and emulators to parse and run them.

I (and I guess several others) raised copyright+ownership+license concerns because we are dealing with copyright laws of several countries: where the submitter lives, United States (GitHub/Microsoft, Fonix (the last known copyright holder of DECtalk), and Australia (NV Access Limited). This means you must balance what is allowed, what is not, and what counts as gray area for these three countries, although we mostly deal with United States copyright law because of GitHub.

There is another reason for raising copyright concerns: should the DECtalk add-on be accepted in its current form, complete with a ROM image dump (again, this is gray area), should the current (official) developers of DECtalk hear about the add-on, they can ask NV Access to take the add-on down (remove it) from the add-on store. This becomes a problem when the supposedly current developer of DECtalk finds that, in their thinking, you (the submitter) have violated their copyright and license terms i.e. distributed (or at least downloaded) the code in a form that is not acceptable to terms of the license. The best outcome is for NV Access to take down your submission and the community not viewing you favorably for a while. The worst case scenario is DECtalk developers suing you, and well, let's not get into costs and time needed to defend your claims in front of judges.

I say all this to help you see that obtaining an add-on somewhere and submitting it to the store require some thought, especially when working with copyrighted material. For the NVDA screen reader, this shows up a lot when dealing with speech synthesizer add-ons (the community had a long discussoin about this back in July when someone submitted Google TTS to the store and people raised copyright and license concerns; Google TTS submission was ultimately rejected/removed from the add-on store submission queue).

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Joseph

---

From: Umesh Rathore <umeshrat...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2026 8:34 AM
To: Joseph Lee <joseph....@gmail.com>
Cc: NVDA Screen Reader Discussion <nvda-...@nvaccess.org>
Subject: Re: about dectalk synthesizer

 

[Noelia]

Hi Umesh, yoor previous message is not in English, in case you want to translate it.

I wanted to share the reference to the closed issue, and sorry if I missed it in previous messages:

https://github.com/nvaccess/addon-datastore/issues/11442

Noelia

El mar, 29 sept 2026 a las 16:35, Umesh Rathore (<umeshrat...@gmail.com>) escribió:

आप मुझे ये बताए कि जब वो कंपनि dec  दुनिया में है हि नहिं तो कौनसे कानून का उलंघन हो रहा है आप लोग चरचा करो इसपर 

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[Sarah Alawami]

I translated it and I only got "discuss this" or "have a discussion." I think more detail is needed from the OP.

Happy Tuesday all.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/CAAtLpyd4WjBFRbvLSNZ3rB5FRx-SwhTxqSjq_YUHCke%2BYO%3DGBQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Joseph Lee]

Hi,

Here is a summary of what happened:

In early September 2026, the original poster (of this thread) submitted DECtalk 01 add-on to the store for processing. I reviewed the code, and found that the add-on included a ROM dump of the DECtalk 01 model (circulating on the internet, by the way). I knew that people were posting ROM images of old speech synthesis hardware on some forums (or links to these images) and some have created SAPI5 ports of some old synthesizers. Then I learned of existence of a DECtalk add-on with the documentation stating that you (the user) needed to supply ROM image files and acknowledged DEC/Fonix as the copyright holder of ROM image data (if I read the docs correctly).

How did the add-on under discussion came to be? Wel, our friend cloned the NVDA community add-on template, forked it, then committed changes on top and renamed the repository. What changes? The already circulating DECtalk add-on without ROM files, then our friend added actual DECtalk 01 ROM image files. Shortly after, the DECtalk add-on was submitted for store registration approval.

When the DECtalk add-on submission was received, I reviewed the submission (code included) and pointed out the following notice from the add-on source code:

Ships no ROM bytes -- the DTC-01 firmware is DEC/Fonix copyright. The
user supplies their own dump; emu/rom_loader.py recognises the chips by
content hash (so filenames don't matter) and refuses to start otherwise.
See DESIGN.md §0.

Like I mentioned, Fonix ceased operations a few years ago. Technically, DECtalk and related technologies are abandonware unless someone with an actual copyright claim as of 2026 shows up and explains what is going on. Due to the unclear status of DECtalk and related tech, people have been working on activities such as dumping ROM images so they can be emulated, attempt to reverse engineer and/or decompile the speech synthesis materials, and do other things. According to some sources, the source code for DECtalk and related technologies was opened not long ago (if done by the original or current copyright holder for various reasons, then the terms of the source code distribution must be checked; if done by someone else, then we need to figure out how and why).

Copyright laws differ around the world. There are international treaties on copyright, and some countries (including United States) provide exceptions. While anyone can submit add-ons including speech engines, the fact the submission materials such as add-on data gets hosted on a source code repository service offered by an American company and the add-on is for a product where the place of origin is Australia complicates the scene. This came to light when I asked Google TTS submitters about copyright law differences for United States (GitHub/Microsoft, Google), Australia (NV Access), and the place of residence for the submitter (Vietnam) back in July 2026.

By the way, we do have several speech engine add-ons available from the NV Access add-on store. Some do include voice data (created by the authors themselves), and others do not include voice data but directs users to download the data either from within the add-on or from websites. For speech engines, the biggest question is, "do you have permission from the speech engine manufacturer to submit the add-on or have distribution rights?"

Cheers,

Joseph

[Umesh Rathore]

इसका यह कंपनी पहले ही बंद हो चुकी है और इसके डेवलपर्सक कीपैड डेवलपर की वेबसाइट परलखा हैवे इसे कमर्शियल उसे के लिए उसे कर सकते हैं इसकासोरबसा रंग फाइल का सोर्स कोड मैंने इसीलिए नहीं दिया था क डेवलपर कह रहे थकि इसको आप कमर्शियल के तौर पर उसे कर सकते हो

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/fd64b355-83d3-4eff-be4f-2d84bec2f8ddn%40nvaccess.org.

[Noelia]

I suggest to reflect links to relevant sources.

I don't understand the relationship between commercial use and provide or not the source code of a product.

Also, I don't think that this solves copyright issues.

Lastly, personally, I try to use add-ons from authors whose reputation is good. Always, but probably now more than before, considering that add-ons can be created by using artificial intelligence, not always appropriately,I think that we hould take special care about our reputation. This includes being as precise as possible by providing relevant sources in our communication.

Noelia

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/CAOk67%2BqXpoOnr4R-OsUG%3DFW43BzphNsq4aRxeCVjh8W9dRs-rw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Umesh Rathore]

तो क्या आपका कहना है कि ये आर्टिफिशियल इंटेलिजेंस कि मदद से बनाया गया है? इसि लिए इसको पास नहिं किया जा सकता?

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[Noelia]

No, please read my message. I haven't say this.

And see the issue where the add-on was rejected please. I'm not interested in this discussion anymore.

Noelia

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[Sarah Alawami]

I'm translating  with chat gpt. If i understand your question correctly, they are not implying the speech add on was created by AI, rather, copyright laws might have unintentionally  been broken.

I hope I translated your question correctly

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[Yong Shing]

To the original author of the addon, can you share the addon here, I'm interested to try it out. Not hosted on the official addon store also no big deal I guess.

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