Hello,
If an application requires voice prompts / transcripts, Developers have a choice of getting it recorded by a commercial voice-over artist. Obviously, voice artists cost a lot and Developers with non-existent budgets cannot afford them.
An alternate solution would be to use a TTS Voice to generate the WAV files. Unfortunately, most companies like Acapela / Cepstral / Ivona etc. do not allow recorded WAV files (using their TTS voices) to be redistributed unless Developers pay more than it will
cost to hire a Voice artist; that too on a recurring yearly basis (royalty).
Microsoft Win8 features some pretty good voices and they can be used too.
Assuming the following scenario:
Task (A): SW Developer to use Microsoft's TTS voices to generate audio, record it as audio data and incorporate the audio data in the end product.
Task (B): The Audio data will not be accessible away from the product. The online mode of the program will stream the audio data from a web-server while the offline mode of the program will use the audio data from an encrypted storage.
I tried reading up on EULA documents available on this topic, but I was unable to spot any specific license grants or restrictions. I can go with the assumption that I can use the API / Components that came with MS Windows OS and Development tools to develop
an application and distribute it; as long as I don't distribute the development tool binaries or other binaries that are restricted for distribution.
We are allowed to freely distribute:
1) Specifically allowed Run-time / SDKs etc. that enable applications to run on the end-user's computer.
2) Any executable program, data (plain text or binary) and supporting files (such as media, databases), that has been generated by the Development tool or generated using a program that was created using the Development tool.
Am I right in my assumption? If someone has studied the SAPI SDK EULA, can they point out any clause that forbid me to perform Task (A) and Task (B)?
TIA