Siri0us, a package for jailbroken iPhones that brings Siri-like dictation to previous generation iPhones, has been removed from the Cydia store. The developer was forced to remove the package after Nuance, the company that makes the voice recognition technology in Siri0us, refused to sell a license to use its offerings in the program.
iDownloadBlog reports that Eric Day, the man behind Siri0us, is looking into free alternatives to Nuance. In the meantime, there's no indication how long Siri0us will continue to work for those that already have it installed.
Top Rated Comments
You do understand that freedom has nothing to do with the topic of discussion?
"Free" maybe.
Cydia is not in the business of pirating software, it is in the business of providing non-Apple approved software. It's this kind of thinking that gives jailbreaking a bad name.
They have been at voice recognition for 20 years. Theirs works better than anyone else's that I know. It's a specialized knowledge. I say that Nuance is one of the rather small number of things in software that should be patented, because it's hard to do, and it took a lot of investment, and now they're cashing in. That's the way it should work.
Codecs are the same thing. It was really, really hard to come up with H.264. It's open, but not free. Fine with me.
Apple is obviously paying a big licensing fee. That's good.
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When they were threatened with being sued. Because they used Nuance.