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MycroftAI / mycroft-core

Mycroft Core, the Mycroft Artificial Intelligence platform.
https://mycroft.ai
Apache License 2.0
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Add note about legal issues when using gTTS in public or commercial projects #2972

Closed JarbasAl closed 3 years ago

JarbasAl commented 3 years ago

originally opened in the OVOS plugin repo

I've just posted an issue about potential legal issues with this API in the gTTS repo: pndurette/gTTS#309

From the plugin description people will only understand that the service can break anytime but there are more risks. Imagine someone will build a system that goes into "production" with this plugin active (you know how people are ^^) and commercializes it. In the best case Google will just ask the owner to shut it down, in the worst case they will get sued :-/.

Personally I don't think an undocumented and unstable API moving in a legal gray area should be included in a system called OpenVoiceOS. For the same reasons it is not part of SEPIA OpenAssistant Framework.

That said I know first hand how hard it is to find an alternative that has comparable quality, is free (=self-hosted) and fast enough to run on Raspberry Pi etc., but I think services like gTTS are just a distraction on the path to become really "open"!

links:

https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-tts-plugin-google-tx/issues/1 https://github.com/pndurette/gTTS/issues/309

krisgesling commented 3 years ago

Hey, thanks for passing this on.

We're going to disable the Google entry in the Selene backend and add a warning in mycroft-core until it gets pulled out in favour of plugins.

Any devices already configured with this option will continue to work as normal, it just won't be available for people to select using the backend going forward. Those who are configuring their own devices can choose to do whatever they want.