Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 383 posts

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

#241

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

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…

The FSF thinks it counts as a derivative work and you have to use the LGPL to allow linking.

However, this has never actually been proven in court, and there's many good arguments that linking doesn't count as a derivative work.

Old post by a lawyer someone else found (version 3 wouldn't affect this) [1]

For me personally I don't really understand how, if dynamic linking was viral, using linux to run code isn't viral. Surely at some level what linux does to run your code calls GPLed code.

It doesn't really matter though, since the FSF stance is enough to scare companies from not using it, and any individual is highly unlikely to be sued.

[1] https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6366

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

#242

Post by graemep »

K0balt wrote: post #237
keyKeeper wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, what's stopping you from feeding the code into an LLM and re-write it and make it yours? You can even add extra steps like make it analyze the code block by block then supervise it as it is rewriting it. Bam. AI age IP freedom. Morals may stop you but other than that? IMHO all open source code is public domain code if anyone is willing to spend some AI tokens.

AI is useful in Chinese walling code, but it’s not as easy as you make it sound. To stay out of legal trouble, you probably should refactor the code into a different language, then back into the target language. In the end, it turns into a process of being forced to understand the codebase and supervising its rewriting. I’ve translated libraries into another language using LLMs, I’d say that process was 1/2 the labor…

I am not sure even that is enough. You would really need to do a clean room reimplementation to be safe - for exactly the same reasons that people writing code write clean room reimplementations.

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

#244

Post by akx »

keyKeeper wrote: post #214
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you haven't used LLMs on large, non-trivial codebases without telling me... :)

Tell me you don't know how to use LLMs properly without telling me. You don't give the whole codebase to an LLM and expect it to have one shot output. Instead, you break it down and and write the code block by block. Then the size if the codebase doesn't matter. You use the LLM as a tool, it is not supposed to replace you. You don't try to become George from Jetsons who is just pressing a button and doesn't touch any…

I'll help you along - this is the core function that Kitten ends up calling. Good luck!

https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/blob/a4ca101c99de3534...

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

#245

Post by bglusman »

thedangler wrote: post #243

Elixir folks. How would I use this with Elixir? I'm new to Elixir and could use this in about 15 days.

It looks like it's Python, so it might be possible to use via https://github.com/livebook-dev/pythonx ? But the parallel huggingface/bumblebee idea was also good, hadn't seen or thought of, that definitely works for a lot of other models, curious if you get working! Some chance I'll play with this myself in a few months, so feel free to report back here or DM me!

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

#247

Post by ape4 »

jacereda wrote: post #162
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.

https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/issues/17

Once the license issues are resolved it would nice if you could install it on a distro with the normal package manager.

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

#248

Post by joshuaissac »

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

You could even extract out the parts that do not call the GPL library into an upstream project under the Apache 2.0 licence, and pull in both that and the GPL library in the downstream project, relying on Apache 2.0 -> GPL 3.0 compatibility instead of explicit dual licensing to allow the combined work to be distributed under GPLv3.

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

#249

Post by K0balt »

graemep wrote: post #242
K0balt wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is useful in Chinese walling code, but it’s not as easy as you make it sound. To stay out of legal trouble, you probably should refactor the code into a different language, then back into the target language. In the end, it turns into a process of being forced to understand the codebase and supervising its rewriting. I’ve translated libraries into another language using LLMs, I’d say that process was 1/2 the labor…

I am not sure even that is enough. You would really need to do a clean room reimplementation to be safe - for exactly the same reasons that people writing code write clean room reimplementations.

Yeah, the algorithms and program flow would have to be materially distinct to be really safe. Maybe switching language paradigms would get that for you in most cases? Js->haskell->js? Sounds like a nightmare lol.

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

#250

Post by oezi »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #153
MutedEstate45 wrote: post #52

The headline feature isn’t the 25 MB footprint alone. It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0. That combo means you can embed a fully offline voice in Pi Zero-class hardware or even battery-powered toys without worrying about GPUs, cloud calls, or restrictive licenses. In one stroke it turns voice everywhere from a hardware/licensing problem into a packaging problem. Quality tweaks can come later; unlocking that deployment…

> 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.

The issue is even bigger: phonemizer is using espeak-ng, which isn't very good at turning graphemes into phonemes. In other TTS which rely on phonemes (e.g. Zonos) it turned out to be one of the key issues which cause bad generations.

And it isn't something you can fix, because the model was trained on bad phonemes (everyone uses Whisper + then phonemizes the text transcript).

Post reply on HN