Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 5, 2017 9:17 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485)
In reply to: Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system by andrewsh
Parent article: Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Don't you think we should hold organizations within the free/libre model to higher standards? I do, because the standards were born of the community, and entrusted to a degree to groups like this.

I've been a strong critic of Mozilla's corporate management, though this speech-recognition contribution is a substantial gift and will enable significant improvements in free software accessibility while using free software.

But I agree, I don't give a pass to Mozilla for its cavorting with the likes of Pocket, and if I used their sync services (I don't, since I don't trust them) I'd be infuriated to learn they were selling me out as the same piece of meat that 'everyone else' does.

It's been a long slippery slope, and we're far from the bottom.

Alexander Pope:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 5, 2017 12:16 UTC (Tue) by TheLessThanAmazing (guest, #119480) [Link] (3 responses)

> I don't give a pass to Mozilla for its cavorting with the likes of Pocket

Cavorting? Pocket has been wholly owned by Mozilla since February.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 6, 2017 19:44 UTC (Wed) by lsl (subscriber, #86508) [Link] (2 responses)

Has the source code been opened up yet, like announced back in February? Can't find it, neither the server-side code nor the mobile apps.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 6, 2017 20:18 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech ?

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 7, 2017 9:23 UTC (Thu) by rillian (subscriber, #11344) [Link]

Pocket announced this week that they were publishing source for three components related to non-Firefox browser extensions. Firefox integration was started as a public project. AFAIK source for the Android and iOS clients has not been published, nor has the server.

The announcement was at the weekly public status meeting, around 20 minutes in.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 5, 2017 12:19 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (3 responses)

You don't need to "trust" Mozilla for their sync services, that's the point of using sync services where the source code is open and you (the user) hold the encryption keys, unlike in other products.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 5, 2017 12:58 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

I might add that I've run my own "mozilla sync" service for several years now. No data at all held on Mozilla's servers.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 15, 2017 7:53 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

How's that working out? I knew someone who set one up back when it was still an open system, but they gave up trying to keep it running after a while.

It's something I've often wondered about doing myself, but Mozilla have thoroughly whitewashed the browser UI and their website of any hint that users ever had a vote in the matter. Maybe my pockets aren't deep enough to know.

Mozilla releases its speech-recognition system

Posted Dec 15, 2017 12:49 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

The original v1.x ffsync service was entirely self-contained, but it turned out that users were too special to cut-n-paste the authentication token to other devices, so v2. went to more traditional login system.

I stuck with v1 until the browser dropped support for it altogether (ff v55 I think), because of the royal PITA it was to install the authentication backend that the v2 sync service relied upon.

But now I have a v2 ffsync instance running, but it's talking to the official firefox authentication servers. [1] Took something like ten minutes to set up, including changing the preference on the browser clients to point at my sync instance..

[1] The only information that mozilla stores about me is my email address and a unique password. And the timestamps when I authenticated each individual browser. The actual sync service is entirely self-contained.