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Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

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Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#221

Post by amelius »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #135
nine_k wrote: post #3

I hope this is the future. Offline, small ML models, running inference on ubiquitous, inexpensive hardware. Models that are easy to integrate into other things, into devices and apps, and even to drive from other models maybe.

Dedicated single-purpose hardware with models would be even less energy-intensive. It's theoretically possible to design chips which run neural networks and alike using just resistors (rather than transistors). Such hardware is not general-purpose, and upgrading the model would not be possible, but there's plenty of use-cases where this is reasonable.

But resistors are, even in theory, heat dissipating devices. Unlike transistors, which can in theory be perfectly on or off (in both cases not dissipating heat).

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#222

Post by dspillett »

wongarsu wrote: post #200
dspillett wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IANAL, but AFAICS this leaves 2 options, switching the license or removing that dependency. There is a third option: asking the project for an exception. Though that is unlikely to be granted¹ leaving you back with just the other two options. And of course a forth choice: just ignore the license. This is the option taken by companies like Onyx, whose products I might otherwise be interested in… ---- [1] Those of us…

A fourth option would be a kind of dual-licensing: the project as-is is available under GPL-3.0, but the source code in this repository excluding any dependencies is also available under Apache 2.0 Any user would still effectively be bound by the GPL-3.0, but if someone can remove the GPL dependencies they could use the project under Apache

That is an option for the publisher of the library, not the consumer of it. If it isn't already done then asking for it to be done is the same as asking for an exception otherwise (option three).

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#225

Post by calvinmorrison »

gorgoiler wrote: post #219
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0 Have you seen the code[1] in the repo? It uses phonemizer[2] which is GPL-3.0 licensed. In its current state, it's effectively GPL licensed. [1]: https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/blob/main/kittentts/on... [2]: https://github.com/bootphon/phonemizer Edit: It looks like I replied to an LLM generated comment.

This would only apply if they were distributing the GPL licensed code alongside their own code. If my MIT-licensed one-line Python library has this line of code… run([“bash”, “-c”, “echo hello”]) …I’m not suddenly subject to bash’s licensing. For anyone wanting to run my stuff though, they’re going to need to make sure they themselves have bash installed. (But, to argue against my own point, if an OS vendor ships my…

GPL is for boomers at this point. Floppy disks? Distribution? You can use a tool but you cant change it? A DLL call means you need to redistribute your code but forking doesn't?

Sillyness

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#226

Post by akx »

antisol wrote: post #103

System Requirements Works literally everywhere Haha, on one of my machines my python version is too old, and the package/dependencies don't want to install. On another machie the python version is too new, and the package/dependencies don't want to install.

I opened a couple of PRs to fix this situation:

https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/pull/21 https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/pull/24 https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/pull/25

If you have `uv` installed, you can try my merged ref that has all of these PRs (and #22, a fix for short generation being trimmed unnecessarily) with

    uvx --from git+https://github.com/akx/KittenTTS.git@pr-21-22-24-25 kittentts --output output.wav --text "This high quality TTS model works without a GPU"

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#227

Post by wongarsu »

dspillett wrote: post #222
wongarsu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fourth option would be a kind of dual-licensing: the project as-is is available under GPL-3.0, but the source code in this repository excluding any dependencies is also available under Apache 2.0 Any user would still effectively be bound by the GPL-3.0, but if someone can remove the GPL dependencies they could use the project under Apache

That is an option for the publisher of the library, not the consumer of it. If it isn't already done then asking for it to be done is the same as asking for an exception otherwise (option three).

The use of the library is four lines. Three set up the library (`phonemizer.backend.EspeakBackend(language="en-us", preserve_punctuation=True, with_stress=True)`), the other calls it (`phonemes_list = self.phonemizer.phonemize([text])`). Plus I guess the import statements. Even ignoring Google vs Oracle I don't think those lines by themselves meet any threshold of originality.

Obviously you can't run them (with the original library) without complying with the GPL. But I don't see why I couldn't independently of that also give you this text file under Apache 2.0 to do with as you want (which for the record still doesn't allow you to run them with the original library without complying with the GPL, but that'd be phoneme forcing you to do that, not this project)

You would have to be very specific about the dual-licensing to avoid confusion about what you are allowed to do under Apache conditions though. You can't just say "it's dual-licensed"

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#229

Post by pbronez »

degamad wrote: post #57
roywiggins wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is at least an interesting idea: https://genderlessvoice.com/

Interesting concept, but why is that site filled with Top X blogspam?

The YouTube video [1] was published in 2019. The Blog spam posts range from Nov 2022 to July 2023.

Other than the video, the only relevant content is on the about page [2]. It says the voice is a collaboration between 5 different entities, including advocacy groups, marketing firms and a music producer.

The video is the only example of the voice in use. There is no API, weights, SDK, etc.

I suspect this was a one-off marketing stunt sponsored by Copenhagen pride before the pandemic. The initial reaction was strong enough that a couple years they were still getting a small but steady flow of traffic. One of the involved marketing firms decided to monetize the asset and defaced it with blog spam.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvv6zYOQqm0

[2] https://genderlessvoice.com/about/

Re: Show HN: Kitten TTS – 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source TTS Model

#230

Post by r4indeer »

gorgoiler wrote: post #219
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0 Have you seen the code[1] in the repo? It uses phonemizer[2] which is GPL-3.0 licensed. In its current state, it's effectively GPL licensed. [1]: https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/blob/main/kittentts/on... [2]: https://github.com/bootphon/phonemizer Edit: It looks like I replied to an LLM generated comment.

This would only apply if they were distributing the GPL licensed code alongside their own code. If my MIT-licensed one-line Python library has this line of code… run([“bash”, “-c”, “echo hello”]) …I’m not suddenly subject to bash’s licensing. For anyone wanting to run my stuff though, they’re going to need to make sure they themselves have bash installed. (But, to argue against my own point, if an OS vendor ships my…

> This would only apply if they were distributing the GPL licensed code alongside their own code.

As far as I understand the FSF's interpretation of their license, that's not true. Even if you only dynamically link to GPL-licensed code, you create a combined work which has to be licensed, as a whole, under the GPL.

I don't believe that this extends to calling an external program via its CLI, but that's not what the code in question seems to be doing.

(This is not an endorsement, but merely my understanding on how the GPL is supposed to work.)

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