Microsoft open-sources its emojis as part of new design philosophy

Microsoft open-sourced most of its emoji library this week. Since the company can't resist a rebrand, it refreshed its emoji library last year and has now turned most of the results over to Figma and GitHub. All told, there are more than 1,500 (1,538 to be precise) options for users to express themselves with, but sadly none …

[Doctor Syntax]

That's a gobbet of open source I can do without.

[cyberdemon]

Assuming this is the same emoji set as used by the latest version of Teams: They are the worst emoji set IMO. Not sure what microsoft's motive is here. Maybe to try to force people to think they are normal?

[CB__]

I agree. The new Teams emojis are awful. The winking one looks like he's been in a fight. Who thought this 3D "upgrade" was a good idea...?

[Headley_Grange]

Clippy

The mention of Clippy made me shudder. I think it is responsible for my still-abiding hatred of anything moving on my screen without my express permission.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Clippy

xroach -roaches 5000 -squish -display Headley_Grange:0 &

:-)

[Dr_N]

Re: Clippy

xneko too.

[r0land]

Why have never the egytians claimed copyright, or patent, protection for their beautiful hieroglyphs???

[Cederic]

Even Disney haven't managed to extend copyright that long.

[Waseem Alkurdi]

They did.

*That* is the reason behind the death-traps in Egyptian pyramids :-P

[Forget It]

Comment

Smiley Face

[katrinab]

Are they not "typefaces", and therefore not subject to copyright?

The "font software" that deals with hinting and so on, is obviously copyrightable, but the actual designs of the glyphs, I'm not so sure about.

[Doctor Syntax]

Ask TfL about New Johnston.

[katrinab]

You can download the "Paddington" typeface, which looks exactly the same.

[IGotOut]

Typefaces have been covered by copyright in multiple countries and then sometimes with restrictions on that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces

[VoiceOfTruth]

The same applies to country flags

Microsoft "owns" country flags?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The same applies to country flags

They might avoid calling it country.

[katrinab]

Re: The same applies to country flags

I think the Beijing government recognises a different flag for the Province of Taiwan to the one used by the Taipei government.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The same applies to country flags

We don't care what the mainland provinces of Taiwan think. The Republic of China gets to choose its own flag and the flags of its rogue provinces on the mainland.

[Rich 2]

There be dragons

Being Microsoft, the emojis probably have a security flaw built-in.

[JDPower666]

Re: There be dragons

Don't worry, a 2gb patch will be released on Tuesday to fix them.

[tekHedd]

Just not that great

Is this really just a cry for help?You'd think a company with as much money as MS could do better.

[gweedo]

Easily one of the ugliest collections of emoji in existence. They rolled these out to teams not long back and everyone recoiled in horror. Looks like they were drawn with crayons.