MBROLA has been released in open source (as well as the voices )
it seems pretty easy to include, there is packages for ubuntu / apt EDIT: and debian too
it uses for text to phonemes translation espeak then returns the audio
more infos:
https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/synthese_vocale#mbrola
might be better than picotts ( and supports lots of languages https://github.com/numediart/MBROLA-Voices )