Apache gets voice code from IBM
p2pnet.net News:- Big Blue’s reputation in the open-source community has gone from "suspect sugar daddy" to "knight in shining armor".
So says a Newsweek story, going on, "IBM is now the giant standing between Linux and what the open-source community sees as a Microsoft front company bent on destroying their free paradise."
In its latest knightly act, IBM has donated Reusable Dialog Components (RDCs) to the Apache Software Foundation and is proposing a project at the Eclipse Foundation to donate markup editors for speech standards established by the W3C.
This will spur the availability of speech-enabled applications by making it easier and more attractive for developers to build and add speech recognition capability in a standardized way, it says.
Supported by more than 20 key industry players from speech vendors to platform providers, the initiative is, "aimed at ending the battles over competing, proprietary specifications," says IBM.
Currently, much of the code in the speech ecosystem is proprietary and specific to each vendor, says Big Blue, continuing:
"This initiative is aimed at giving speech developers the benefits of open, standards-based programming models and tools that mainstream developers have had. This can also allow companies to speech-enable their existing applications more quickly and efficiently since developers will be able to build speech applications from standards-based components from various speech providers in the same application."
"Since its initial $40 million contribution to launch Eclipse in November of 2001, IBM has continued to contribute to making Eclipse an open platform for application development and integration," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation. "With this project proposal, IBM is taking another step toward propelling innovation and giving Java developers the tools to work speech technology into their applications."
IBM recently decided to create an open-source project around the Cloudscape Java database.
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See:-
Newsweek – An Unlikely Champion, Newswekk, September 11, 2004
Reusable Dialog Components – IBM to Contribute Speech Software to Apache Software and Eclipse Foundations, September 13, 2004
