gentoo drops speakup

gentoo drops speakup

[josh]

I just saw that gentoo has dropped speakup for 2.6.22.  I think thiss is the second distro to drop speakup.  What can we 
do?  I would hate to see speakup die out after all these years.

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Luke Yelavich]

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On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 04:46:03PM EST, josh@techlab.cviatlanta.org wrote:
> I just saw that gentoo has dropped speakup for 2.6.22.  I think thiss is the second distro to drop speakup.  What can we 
> do?  I would hate to see speakup die out after all these years.

This has been done, at least in Gentoo's case, purely for technical 
reasons. Ubuntu dropped it for others, although it seems as that was 
actually a blessing in disguise.
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Jabber: themuso@jabber.org.au
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Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Zachary Kline]

Hello,
    Admittedly, I'm curious.  What was the blessing in disguise you saw in 
that?  I hadn't been following the situation closely enough, it seems.
Thanks much,
Zack.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Luke Yelavich" <themuso@themuso.com>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: gentoo drops speakup


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 04:46:03PM EST, josh@techlab.cviatlanta.org wrote:
>> I just saw that gentoo has dropped speakup for 2.6.22.  I think thiss is 
>> the second distro to drop speakup.  What can we
>> do?  I would hate to see speakup die out after all these years.
>
> This has been done, at least in Gentoo's case, purely for technical
> reasons. Ubuntu dropped it for others, although it seems as that was
> actually a blessing in disguise.
> - -- 
> Luke Yelavich
> GPG key: 0xD06320CE
> (http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt)
> Email & MSN: themuso@themuso.com
> Jabber: themuso@jabber.org.au
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Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Ralph W. Reid]

Take heart.  Slackware has recently released their latest version
(12.0), and one of the 2.6.21.5 kernels included includes Speakup
modifications :) .

Enjoy this good news, and have a great day.

On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 02:46:03AM -0400, josh@techlab.cviatlanta.org wrote:
> I just saw that gentoo has dropped speakup for 2.6.22.  I think thiss is the second distro to drop speakup.  What can we 
> do?  I would hate to see speakup die out after all these years.

-- 
Ralph.  N6BNO.  Wisdom comes from central processing, not from I/O.
rreid@sunset.net  http://personalweb.sunset.net/~rreid
...passing through The City of Internet at the speed of light...
SEC (x) / COSEC (x) = (TAN (x) / COTAN (x)) ^ 2

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Gregory Nowak]

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On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 07:37:58AM -0700, Ralph W. Reid wrote:
> Take heart.  Slackware has recently released their latest version
> (12.0), and one of the 2.6.21.5 kernels included includes Speakup
> modifications :) .
> 
> Enjoy this good news, and have a great day.
> 

This isn't big news, speakup works just fine the way it is up to and
including 2.6.21.6. I would not be at all surprised therefore if
slackware were to drop speakup by their next release, if the current
issues with speakup weren't fixed by that time. It would surprise me
greatly though to see a distro's team of maintainers take it upon
themselves to cure speakup's serial code and other problems, just so
they could include a speakup-patched kernel in their next
release. Note, I am not saying myself that speakup has problems, I
haven't looked at the code for a while. I'm just repeating what others
have said on this in the past, so no flames if you please.

Greg


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Re: gentoo drops speakup

[John Heim]

> This isn't big news, speakup works just fine the way it is up to and
> including 2.6.21.6. I would not be at all surprised therefore if
> slackware were to drop speakup by their next release, if the current
> issues with speakup weren't fixed by that time. It would surprise me
> greatly though to see a distro's team of maintainers take it upon
> themselves to cure speakup's serial code and other problems, just so
> they could include a speakup-patched kernel in their next
> release. Note, I am not saying myself that speakup has problems, I
> haven't looked at the code for a while. I'm just repeating what others
> have said on this in the past, so no flames if you please.

I would like to know what, if anything, can be done to get the resources 
allocated that are needed to fix this problem. Could the kernel development 
team fix it if they wanted to? What determines their priorities and where 
does the development time come from?

I wonder if it would help to draw attention to the problem. What is the NFB 
doing about this? They are always talking about jobs. It seems to me that a 
lot of jobs for blind people depend on speakup.   It's conceivable that a 
group like the NFB might even be willing to put up enough money to have 
somebody work on it for 3 months  or 6 months or whatever it would take to 
fix the problem. Who knows? It might be worth exploring anyway.

But maybe I'm out of bounds. I don't want to step on anybody's toes. I don't 
think it would be worthwhile for me to volunteer to work on the code. But if 
I can help in some other way...

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 09:16:47AM -0500, John Heim wrote:
> 
> I wonder if it would help to draw attention to the problem. What is the NFB 
> doing about this? They are always talking about jobs. It seems to me that a 
> lot of jobs for blind people depend on speakup.   It's conceivable that a 
> group like the NFB might even be willing to put up enough money to have 
> somebody work on it for 3 months  or 6 months or whatever it would take to 
> fix the problem. Who knows? It might be worth exploring anyway.

Perhaps some NFB folks on the list could address this. But as on
outside observer, my impression is that NFB, i.e. NFBCS, is in love
with Windows and the 3rd party developers, and not much impressed with
open source and the Linux world. 

To quote Greg, who says it so well, I stand to be corrected here.

Chuck


-- 
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My new web site location is at: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net
 The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Kirk Reiser]

Hey yeah, if we can get some funds to actually pay coders that would
be nice.  If we could get some volunteers to help out with a lot of
the various speakup projects that would be nicer.  If we could get
some consistant volunteers to even help maintane our web site and code
repositories that would also be very nice.  In other words, dedicated
help of many types would be nice.  We have had people take on
responsibilities over the past years but they sort of taper off after
a bit.

So don't feel sheepish.  If you or anyone can help in anyway just let
me know.
  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Albert E. Sten-Clanton]

Kirk, if you or somebody you trust starts a fund to pay coders, I'd sure contribute something.  I don't have a lot, but I presume that wouldn't be the point if there are enough of us.  I could also try to get the few "free software" types I've met around here recently to help roll a bigger and bigger snowball for this.  

Al
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kirk Reiser" <kirk@braille.uwo.ca>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 11:04 AM
Subject: Re: gentoo drops speakup


> Hey yeah, if we can get some funds to actually pay coders that would
> be nice.  If we could get some volunteers to help out with a lot of
> the various speakup projects that would be nicer.  If we could get
> some consistant volunteers to even help maintane our web site and code
> repositories that would also be very nice.  In other words, dedicated
> help of many types would be nice.  We have had people take on
> responsibilities over the past years but they sort of taper off after
> a bit.
> 
> So don't feel sheepish.  If you or anyone can help in anyway just let
> me know.
>   Kirk
> 
> -- 
> 
> Kirk Reiser The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
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RE: gentoo drops speakup

[Georgina Joyce]

Hi

Well, I'm not sure how the system works, but over here we have summer code camps where developers come together and tackle a particular problem.  I don't know who organises them nor who picks the projects to be worked on.

There must be a number of possible solutions.  I personally like the idea of raising funds to employ a blind Linux user for a while in order to tackle the problem.

Gena

Amateur Call: M 0 E B P

VOIP / IM: gena1959uk



-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca] On Behalf Of Kirk Reiser
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 4:05 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: gentoo drops speakup


Hey yeah, if we can get some funds to actually pay coders that would
be nice.  If we could get some volunteers to help out with a lot of
the various speakup projects that would be nicer.  If we could get
some consistant volunteers to even help maintane our web site and code
repositories that would also be very nice.  In other words, dedicated
help of many types would be nice.  We have had people take on
responsibilities over the past years but they sort of taper off after
a bit.

So don't feel sheepish.  If you or anyone can help in anyway just let
me know.
  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

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Re: gentoo drops speakup

[John Heim]

From: "Kirk Reiser" <kirk@braille.uwo.ca>
> Hey yeah, if we can get some funds to actually pay coders that would
> be nice.  If we could get some volunteers to help out with a lot of
> the various speakup projects that would be nicer.

I'm kind of surprised to hear that. I mean, i can understand that you need 
volunteers but would  that actually be better than finding a way to get 
money allocated for getting the speakup kernel code straightened out? If so 
that's good because we ought to be able to drum up some volunteers. The 
other problem might not be solvable short of cloning you.

Kirk, I know you're busy and I hate to ask but do you think you could give a 
brief status report? Is speakup ever going to be in the main kernel source 
tree? Of course, I understand these things take time but I was just 
wondering if there is a problem.

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Gregory Nowak]

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Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 05:11:33PM -0500, John Heim wrote:
> Kirk, I know you're busy and I hate to ask but do you think you could give a 
> brief status report? Is speakup ever going to be in the main kernel source 
> tree? Of course, I understand these things take time but I was just 
> wondering if there is a problem.

I'm not Kirk, but from what I understand, speakup isn't in the
mainstream kernel source, because the kernel developers think the code
is badly written, and it doesn't meet their standards.

As for whether or not speakup will be a part of the kernel tree, I
hate to be blunt and direct, but I think the question to ask before
that one as of now, is whether speakup will work ever again or not? I
know all of us would probably say yes, and it probably will, but it
isn't going to magically happen. From what I've seen in the gentoo bug
description, the main show stopper now is speakup's serial code, and
as far as I can tell, fixing that will mean either rewriting how
speakup probes for a serial synth (which doesn't sound and probably
isn't simple), or putting a part of, or all of speakup into user
space.

No, I'm not volunteering. Like a couple of people here said, I too have
looked at the speakup code in the past. While I have a vague inkling
of what's happening, I don't understand enough about kernel internals
myself to write the same thing from scratch, or probably to even
attempt successfully modifying it. Yes, I know I could learn kernel
programming, but that would take time, and time, like many of us,
isn't something I happen to have right now.

Greg


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Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Travis Siegel]

Well, I'm not especially adept at c coding, which is why I've not  
volunteered for coding help, though I can usually hack things to get  
them to work, though my fixes/patches/hacks aren't by any means  
production level code.
However, I'm a fairly decent cli  hand, and can certainly offer  
assistance with web related things.
So, if you can find something for me to do, I'd be willing to step up  
and offer some services.


On Jul 16, 2007, at 10:04 AM, Kirk Reiser wrote:

> Hey yeah, if we can get some funds to actually pay coders that would
> be nice.  If we could get some volunteers to help out with a lot of
> the various speakup projects that would be nicer.  If we could get
> some consistant volunteers to even help maintane our web site and code
> repositories that would also be very nice.  In other words, dedicated
> help of many types would be nice.  We have had people take on
> responsibilities over the past years but they sort of taper off after
> a bit.
>
> So don't feel sheepish.  If you or anyone can help in anyway just let
> me know.
>  Kirk
>
> -- 
>
> Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>

Re: gentoo drops speakup

[Joseph C. Lininger]

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Hash: SHA512

I have a good amount of experience with programming, including
programming in the C language. Time is something I don't have gobs of,
but I have a fair amount. I would be willing to help in any way you guys
need me to. I'm not super experienced with kernel development, but I can
always learn if that's necessary.
Joe

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