Microsoft is Open-Sourcing Its Emoji (theverge.com) 13
Microsoft said Wednesday that it has released almost all of its emoji designs to GitHub and Figma, allowing anyone to tweak and design their own. From a report: Microsoft isn't saying that you'll be able to use your own emoji designs inside Windows, and the company isn't saying that absolutely all of the company's emoji are being released into open source, either. Specifically, Microsoft is excluding the Clippy emoji (boo!) and a few that includes the Microsoft logo. Naturally, Microsoft can't release its own copyrighted trademarks into the public domain, Jon Friedman, a corporate vice president of design and research at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. It's no small task to open-source each of Microsoft's 1,538 emoji, Friedman wrote. "Similar to how typeface sets include bold, italic, and regular styles, emoji must exist as a SVG, PNG, and JPG file to allow for true versatility. And for each of those, a vector, flat, and monochrome version should be created for scale and flexibility."
Are pictures Open-Source? (Score:2)
Sure this is good, having some more freedom on pictures that we may use a lot. However what Source Code is in emojis? It is a picture, where we could have changed them in the past as well, we just didn't because Microsoft would probably put a copyright claim against us.
Re: (Score:2)
Like open-sourcing wingdings (Score:1)
Emojii are code points in the unicode set these days. That makes this sort-of a set of character designs for use in a unicode font. The upshot is that everyone'll use the same ones, mostly. You know, whether GUN EMOJI gets painted as a water pistor or a real-ish gun. Whether the HEAP OF SHIT EMOJI gets painted with a laughing clippy face or not. And so on.
Me, I think adding emojii to unicode was a poor move. But then, I no longer think that unicode is a good idea at all. Certainly the execution leaves a c
Re: (Score:2)
It's like an open source font. As well as being free to use, you can improve it or fork it. Might be useful to supplement existing open source fonts that lack emoji.
FUCK MICROSOFT (Score:1, Insightful)
one or the other please - (Score:4, Funny)
"copyrighted trademarks" ?
Some things can be copyrighted, some can be trademarked. Why do both? Looks like lazy journalism to me. But two big words together like that does have a rather impressive appearance.
Oh god why! (Score:3)
They are open sourcing the "special" looking ones. Why couldn't they open source normal looking smileys used by normal people rather than the "we better call your carer" looking ones from MS Teams.
Figma (Score:2)
Figma balls.
Get it while you can (Score:2)
Get it while you can. They open sourced the Clippy graphics a couple of years ago for about a day and then it disappeared off github.
If anyone forked that, BTW, I'd love a copy. I use Clippy as my Teams avatar.
Unicode "Pistol" emoji (Score:2)
Yeah, yeah, I suppose it is too late because every major tech company deviated from the standard and went with a toy gun.
Such silliness!
Re: (Score:2)
Nerf World will save you from an enemy invasion!
Gotta look at who is being softened and who is being toughened up. Compare international TikTok versions maybe.
Microsoft emojis... (Score:2)
Microsoft emojis released with a yes along with a but...or a maybe along with a no...the double-talk of corporate progress. :(
JoshK.