LibreOffice starts a mascot design contest!
LibreOffice is probably the most popular alternative to Microsoft Office, and comes preinstalled on many GNU/Linux distributions, however, it's also available for nearly every major free and non-free OS out there...And it seems that they are looking for a new Mascot!
In an article posted on June 28, The LibreOffice Design Team announced a contest that they have opened to the public, asking for people to submit designs for the new mascot. On top of the obvious reward of having your design potentially chosen, there are also three prizes available for potential submissions:
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Slimbook KATANA Intel i5
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Nextcloud box with Raspberry Pi 3
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Nitrokey Pro 3
In the original article, the Design Team states that there are some metaphors that they believe might be suitable for LibreOffice and for the mascot, to give some ideas. However, they are also open to others.
"We have started by asking on the mailing lists some input about the concepts associated with LibreOffice.
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Freedom/Openness
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Dove like bird, through occupied by Apache OpenOffice (and disliked by some)
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Hummingbird: Light, free, fast, with colors that remember also the LibreOffice colors
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Dragonfly: is a beautiful animal with many colors which we can find all over the world, is a fast and agile flier with a robust body, and a symbol of courage, strength, and happiness (unfortunately, the dragonfly is used at DragonFly BSD and Opera Dragonfly)
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Speed/Improvement
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Fast birds, smart and not aggressive, hunter
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Bird of prey (raptor)
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Pegasus, Phoenix
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Intelligence
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Owl: known for wisdom since the Greek goddess Athena, whose pet was an owl
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Beaver (Castor canadensis): beavers are ingenious builders who can change the course of rivers, they are powerful patient doers despite their size, who can modify their living space in a few days
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Cuteness / Seven lives
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Louse/Virus: it irritates sometimes, but you can’t get rid of
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Tardigrade (‘pudgy wudgie’): also known as water bears, they are adorable, and also perhaps the most indestructible creatures known to man
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Rock-hopper penguin: it’s very cute with orangey-red-yellow tufts out of jet-black ears, they are impressively determined, despite the comedy-value of the way they waddle and bounce they achieve incredible feats of athleticism such as jumping higher than their own height from a standing start "
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The Design Team went on to give a couple of methods in how you can submit your designs, "To share your proposal please use our Nextcloud instance https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/l58GED3Ngq92Rge with a clear identification of <date>_<author>_<name>.png (e.g. 20170629_htietze_grumpycat.png), or submit your artwork per E-mail to contest@libreoffice.org. You can submit as many ideas as you want, but we may refuse input in case of very close designs."
So, to those of you with artistic talent, here is a rather exciting opportunity that you should jump on! The contest is open until August 31, so you have about a month to start designing and sending in your ideas.
For more information, please see the article posted by The LibreOffice Design Team and the best of luck to any of you who decide to take part in this exciting opportunity!
Should modernize the UI and improve document compatibility instead of coming up with a bloody mascot. Had to go back to Office after years of ducking it because the latest version of Libreoffice couldn’t open up a basic resume template. How sad.
[off topic]
I wish that they would improve LibreOffice Base so I don’t have to write SQL to get anything done, instead of bothering with mascots, which IMO is childish,
Takes ages to launch. Childish icons which don’t render well under Windows (probably better under Linux). Give us a full-blown word-processor outliner instead of “mascots”. Microsoft Office launches fast.
Clippy wants another chance
https://www.smore.com/clippy-js
[Off topic]
I picked Apache OpenOffice because it has noticeably more users. I had trouble finding numbers, but IIRC 5-6 years ago it was about 80,000 for LibreOffice and something like 400,000 for OpenOffice.
The suite I’d use would be the one most likely to be used within companies, Microsoft Office excepted. Also the one closest to Microsoft Office I guess, in particular Excel, so that I stay proficient with Microsoft tools. I’m not sure if LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice is closer in terms of UI, syntax, options and whatnot.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/libreoffice-downloads-and-development-numbers-are-really-impressive-498395.shtml#sgal_0
https://lwn.net/Articles/699047/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/28/apache_openoffice_not_dead_yet/
You can consider Open Office dead already. Developers jumped off that ship long time ago and last stable update was released 8 months ago.
The only reason it has a greater number of users is because of greater name recognition and inertia. The devlopment of AOO is nearly ceased, I recommend checking out LibreOffice if you haven’t already. It’s an easy transition to make, and much better if you want regular updates.
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/10/10087250b12adf60b850c4c049e2447e56dc1bb3efe203cf69ab5ecef6336652.jpg
This should be their mascot. Severs perfectly for an office mascot.
Maybe ghacks inspired mascot? ;)))))
How about an old Ford Pinto as a mascot?
It catches fire on its own, sometimes doesn’t work, and is lethargic, but there is no cash outlay.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the idea of LibreOffice, but poor quality control with too many bugs is a deal-breaker.
An unacceptable attitude by one of their board members (Joel) was enough for me to haul it out to the junkyard and no longer recommend it to others.
stfu.
Funny that you think LibreOffice is slow, Chris.
I’ve been using it for word processing for about nine months. When I click the desktop short cut, it loads immediately and displays recently accessed documents. A click on the Doc I want and it’s open ! Libre has never hung or refused to load.
So I don’t understand why yours did not work !
My version is 5.3.4.2. Maybe you were using an antique version ?
“An unacceptable attitude by one of their board members (Joel) was enough for me to haul it out to the junkyard and no longer recommend it to others.”
So you don’t like Joel. What has that got to do with the program developers and other users ??
In contrast to you, I would recommend this FREE Office Software Suite to anybody who needs to replace MS Office.
Compared to Microsoft Office, it’s quite slow. It’s using Java while Microsoft Office is using native, that’s why it’s slower. It becomes more and more slower over the time, antique version actually starts faster.
I also have bug that made me cannot copy text. If you Google it, it’s quite popular bug.
Strangely it only happen sometimes and the developer cannot reproduce it, I’m just hoping for them to fix that long time annoying bug.
The other thing is I hate how often it updates, I need to turn off update notification because of it.
Tried version 5.3.4.2, Buggy and slow. Especially Calc.
It’s not uncommon for experiences to be different.
I’m glad it works okay for you. It doesn’t work well for me.
And, in my opinion, Joel is such an arse that I am unwilling to contribute to the project. Again, in my opinion, he creates an inhospitable environment.
Surely some sort of cartoon office centric object would be appropriate… Perhaps a sellotape roll, a staple or something like that?