Why though? Isn’t there already a SAPI5 version of it?

I suppose if we're talking about legality and words written in official documents, it's true that Phonics technically owns Dectalk. Morally and therefore legitimately however, the real owners are the late Denis Klatt and the people who open sourced it. That's how I view it in my head. The word of law is of no personal consequence to me if what I'm doing isn't morally wrong. I stopped using Eloquence a long time ago because I refuse to support Code Factory's higher ups, whomever that might be after the recent acquisition of Nuance Com. In that same light, I don't particularly care if Dectalk is the intellectual property of Phonics or not. Everyone knows by now that I have constantly stuck it to the big corporation's, and although my temperament has grown milder as I get older and I'll never fight any user on this forum over this by any means, my stance against them has never and will never change. To be fair, I don't think Phonics will particularly care if someone uses the Dectalk source code given how old it is, but saying they really do care and don't want people to do anything with it, it's all the same to me. Legally they are well within their right to take action against whomever they so choose when it comes down to the source, but morally they don't have anymore rights to the code than you or I. I don't care what a peace of paper says; Phonics does not own Dectalk anymore. I'd never use Dectalk myself because I've gotten used to ESpeak, but if anyone else wants to mess around with the source code, I won't be one of the users jumping in to call them out.

No, it's worse than that.  This is the kind of thing that destroys careers if your name gets attached.  it doesn't even particularly matter whether or not you get sued.  Getting sued is a whole lot of icing on that particular cake, but it's still just the icing.  Once you're known as someone who is willing to engage in IP theft, your employment prospects in a field that relies entirely on you producing IP plummet.

Look. I get it.  I'm not making an ethical claim.  I think that a lot of stuff about IP law is broken and that the Eloquence/Dectalk story is a perfect example of why.  But that doesn't change that it's the law, and that idealistic "in spirit so-and-so owned it" stances are, you know, illegal.

Maybe someone here wants to risk it.  Maybe someone here has the anonymity necessary, or lives somewhere where this isn't a concern, I dunno.  But this is thread 2 in which "well patents, pfft" is the stance we're taking and just come on.