Yesterday I did the presentation at the Center of Spoken Language Understanding. I think it went pretty well. Especially so, because after the talk ms Lois Black (neuropsychologist I think) and Jan van Santen (a professor who told me that Kevin Lenzo actually graduated under him) and I had a rather long conversation about Krista and pVoice.
If I wasn't already impressed with the friendlyness of Portland people, these two were absolutely the best so far. They were really interested in pVoice, and we spoke about the possibility to add certain features (like using sounds for input), about licensing issues (or actually the lack thereof) and the chances of getting more grants to further develop pVoice. It might implicate that certain added features won't be Open Source. This however doesn't have to be a problem, because I think Open Source is not a goal by itself. It's a means of getting other people involved to improve the software and to let people add their own features. I'm very happy to have chosen the Artistic License as the license under which pVoice is distributed....
Of course the time was too short to really get into details, but they're going to see if there is a way to get more funding from certain organizations. This of course is very exciting!!
keeping my fingers crossed
If you do get funding, would you be paid directly or would you have to create a non-profit organization? I'm not familiar with law in the Netherlands, but I thought I would ask. My current employer is willing to match contributions made by its employees to non-profit and charitable organizations. I've been a great fan of your work since I read about pVoice one or two years ago. As a parent, your family story pulls at my heart strings. Maybe I can be of a little help in the future.
Have fun in Portland! It's not usually this hot, really...
Re:pVoice
jouke on 2004-07-25T02:47:49
We didn't get the chance to get into this much detail. However, I know that it's quite a pain to set up a non profit organization in NL and do it right. I've tried to accomplish this less than a year ago and had to drop the idea (at least for a while) because it took a lot of time and effort.
The eventual goal of funding would be to let me work on pVoice, not as something I do in my free time, but as a 'job'. Full time. Without funding that means I would have to be able to make money from it. In a full Open Source model this will be hard, given that the potential users wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on service and support (I think).
However, I must say the willingness of your employer sounds attractive.
