Licensing & Distribution of Applications and Resources Ruvan Weerasinghe University of Colombo School of Computing Vientiane, Lao PDR – Jan 2009

Phase I Experiences Applications – TTS, OCR Resources – Corpus, Lexicon Licensing – Involves both apps & resources Distribution – Chiefly involves apps – But also Corpus

Phase I Scenario Licensing – Ownership with IDRC – Partners free to have unlimited copies Distribution – No real plan except to testers! – In the case of TTS, only to Blind – Biggest issue inability to release corpus

Phase I Outcome TTS System – Used by blind community, free OCR System – Only used internally (not in production environment)‏ Sinhala Corpus – Unable to distribute Sinhala Lexicon – So far only for internal processing

Phase I Outcome (contd.)‏ Sinhala Corpus and Lexicon requested by Commercial entities – Considered (only) derivative works as distributable (pre-CC) e.g. words – Only derivatives that did not serve the same purpose as original – Sold words/freqs to vendor – Receipts ploughed back into Lab (apart from minor payments to staff)

Phase II Scenario Country partner(s) ownership (even for commercial purposes)‏ – IDRC to have unlimited numbers of free copies – Better regime for promotion and sustainability Apps: TM tool, Handwriting recognition Resources: Language Teacher, Training Material for content creation

Phase II Scenario Country partner(s) ownership (even for commercial purposes)‏ – IDRC to have unlimited numbers of free copies – Better regime for promotion and sustainability Apps: TM tool, Handwriting recognition Resources: Language Teacher, Training Material for content creation

Phase II Scenario (contd.)‏ Main aim remains education & awareness of Local Language use – As widely as possible – Hence free or for nominal fee – Vendors to charge (how to control?)‏ However, commercial viability is not sacrilege! – It would ensure sustainability – Intend to pursue means for this

Other Initiatives EnSiTip: GPL'd and freely distributed – Significant user community MS Speller: 'Work for hire' – No other model (also in case of Nuance – a mobile company)‏ Speech Recognizer: Shared IPR – Retain ownership of corpus – Unlimited free copies to partner? – Be paid royalty on sales