There is an bug in rpmbuild regarding the %setup macro. It makes -b (before changing into build sub dir) behave like -a (after changing into build sub dir) when -c is given. Your package relies on this behaviour. As we just fixed that upstream so your package will break after the next RPM release. See https://github.com/rpm-software-management/rpm/pull/21 for the details. Please change the following line: %setup -c -q -n festival -D -T -b 300
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 24 development cycle. Changing version to '24'. More information and reason for this action is here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Program_Management/HouseKeeping/Fedora24#Rawhide_Rebase
The Festival package in Fedora needs a lot of work to update to a newer release, fix a lot of bugs, and generally clean up the packaging. And, despite best intentions, we just haven't had the developer interest in doing so. The current plan is to retire Festival from Fedora. See thread at https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/UOL4ETKKOFGTFZZ36V726OF7UTHYMEYP/ for discussion. Despite being large, slow, and fragile, Festival is interesting software and as far as I know can produce the best quality results of any open-source TTS system. It would be nice if there is interest in continuing it, but that should probably be done from a clean slate in any case. In the meantime, I think it's most honest to close the currently-open bugs as "WONTFIX". Thanks everyone for your reports and effort in making Fedora better.