But Julius (which is the core tool Simon is based on) also has a
license
clause which I'd consider non-Free: you're required to cite it in any
research which uses Julius in any way. It might even be interpreted in a
way where if you use Simon to dictate a completely unrelated research
paper, you have to cite Julius. This is a usage restriction which is IMHO
really not acceptable (and IIRC, another piece of software was already
rejected from Fedora for a similar clause). Licenses are not the proper
venue to enforce academic honesty. That said, spot said at:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2009-March/025990.html
that he thinks this clause is fine (but he only said "pretty sure", so I
guess he'd probably have to double-check with the FSF and/or RH Legal
before giving a definite answer).
PS: And that clause is also definitely GPL-incompatible (as confirmed by
spot), so it is illegal to distribute a binary of the GPLed Simon linked
against Julius. Making it another reason why Simon is not distributable.
Kevin Kofler