> It could be ran in a VM or even using windows compatibility layer.
The overwhelming majority of folks using this software seem to be extremely non-technical. Any of the options you listed would work for HN readers but not the general public. If it doesn't "just install" it's useless.
> The story calls the creator a genius, but really it's just a guy that had a passionate project.
Arguably, creating software that nobody else has managed to create that is beloved by its users is genius. He was clearly an exceptional engineer to have made the software and exceedingly business minded to get it into the hands of users and delight them. It's not hard to make mediocre software, but it's a terrific challenge to make it so good that your users are lost without it. You don't need to be in the running for the Turing award to be a genius.
I can't imagine it would not be more than a few minutes of downloading the image from archive.org and running it on any VM - I would be a bit surprised if this had any kind of sophisticated VM countermeasures in it.
Meanwhile, I can believe there is some 4 million line code of something (maybe it was written in assembly!) - in any case a horrible unmaintainable mess that nobody at this software company wants to deal with anymore. Rather just rewrite it in some web based shit like half of this site does for a living.
Also on actually reading TFA - it's rife with errors - at no point in history was the DECTalk the only game in town for speech synthesis - let alone 1999! - and the idea that it was the only one with controllable pitch is hogwash as anyone with a early 90s Mac can attest.
But the article's description of how Siri synthesizes speech is grossly inaccurate.
I had to chuckle about the genius of being able to program C and Lua as if typing English - I mean that's pretty much any reasonably proficient dev.
The quote about 4 million lines of code and how could they it would be impossible for them to share it because it is too large for email...
I think the program's creator was a great guy, doesn't seem like he was really thinking about his death seriously. His friends loved him and miss him but do not look to continue his legacy by helping the community.
The worst thing is that all the little dialects that were preserved by this are now at larger risk of being lost.