[mary-users] German voice proprietary? Clarification needed.

[Klaus Knopper]

Hello list,

Could please anybody with a authoritative legal voice from DFKI clarify
the license which the german tts part of mary uses?

>From the DFKI webpage:

"In addition, German synthesis is released under a DFKI research
license."

This is already a little shock, considering that Mary is supposed to be
Open Source, but together with the german voice, it isn't.

Excerpts from the license:

"The software must no be made available to third parties."

"(2) The Licensed Software may only be used by the Licensee on the
 Licensee's electronic data processing (EDP) systems."

"(4) The Licensed Software is to be used by the Licensee
 exclusively for the purpose of non-commercial use. Further
 development or commercial use of the Licensed Software or parts
 thereof requires the prior written consent of the Licensor."

These conditions would render the german voice unusable for me and many
other developers, for example for a desired purpose of using mary as a
screenreader for open source software distributions, for commercial as
well as for non-commercial use. It is not an Open Source license, and
the software as a whole is non-distributable. If this is the case, what
sense does it make for us to follow the german voices development? It
won't be part of any commercial-grade software or even
community-project, ever. Putting time and work in its development
and evaliation would be a waste.

Please let me know if my observation is correct.

With kind regards
-Klaus Knopper