Both of these are very consistent and good open source emoji. I think in the past a lot of these projects that were not backed by companies eventually devolved into a paid product that was no longer open source, but I'm hopeful that openmoji continues down the FOSS path.
JFTR, "Symbola" font[0] actually is not an opensource and just freeware for personal use, but it was "fully free for any use"[1] till February/March 2018[2].
BTW, Even in actual state "Symbola" is my fav font for emoji input on desktop (via Gucharmap[2]) and mobile (via UnicodePad[3]).
Looks like Google’s aren’t super easy to use outside of Chrome and Android:
> NotoColorEmoji uses the CBDT/CBLC color font format, which is supported by Android and Chrome/Chromium OS. Windows supports it starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update in Chrome and Edge. On macOS, only Chrome supports it, while on Linux it will support it with some fontconfig tweaking, see issue #36. Currently we do not build other color font formats.
Emojis are normally used inlined in text. So, I think, they should demo theirs the same size as they would be when inlined in text. Otherwise hard to tell tell the emoji quality.
I'm also a bit concerned with the thick black outlines, they may look not as good at the small scale (may look too noisy or may overpower small color details).
At least the lines aren't as horribly thick as Microsoft's current emoji set. Though I think they're gonna be redoing all their emojis with a 3D art style soon
The last time I evaluated these for use in my app, I found that the "consistent" and "minimalist" visual style makes it really difficult to recognise object/plant/food emoji from one another by shape or at a distance. Other emoji have clear shapes, but not enough internal detail to understand what they mean. this is especially problematic with a set of non-Android, non-Twitter, non-Apple emoji, where users haven't learned the shapes yet, but have to go by looks. It looks like the creators of this project wanted "function over form", or at least "form follows function", but in their pursuit of Bauhaus they accidentally ended up with Droodles.
Even the person ones aren't great. I actually thought that the baby was a hunchbacked old man. And the facepalm looks like someone covering up one eye to read an eye chart. I seriously wouldn't have gotten either of those without the caption telling me.
From the site: "All emojis are free to use under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license"
I'd like CC0 better for this case. If anyone is looking for a repository with many CC0 icons (among other licenses), I recommend SvgRepo: https://www.svgrepo.com/
The creator of the project suggests that the license is for edits of the emojis, rather than the projects which use the emoji. [1] As someone involved with the project, I'm not sure how this should be communicated so that this is clear
Yeah but the creator of the project can suggest whatever they want if they don't understand the license they use.
Going over CC-BY-SA for those used to software licenses only: If I make a work which uses CC-BY-SA material I have to provide attribution. If I modify the emoji to suit my own purposes, I need to release these new emoji under CC-BY-SA, and attribution to the originals must be provided, they may not be kept proprietary.
Using it in a project is redistribution, modifying it is adaption.
The license states that you have to give attribution according to CC4 and that any edits will carry the same license, the comment in your issue page suggests open sourcing the files you use to make the edits so others can easily edit your changes as well.
These are great. Certain interactions are really tough to represent pictographically but they did pretty well from what I saw.
They've even had a go at the black and white versions of some flags! (but naturally they have a few they need to work on still). Flip the color switch on the link below to see it:
It covers all existing more or less complete emoji sets,, with licensing information (except for Apple Emojis. Nobody knows what is the license for Apple Emojis and how summer developers get away with using them).
Yes, under certain conditions. In particular pay attention to the requirements for redistribution under clause 4 and the lack of trademark license specified in clause 6.
Aren't those all copyrighted? E.g. for the column "Appl" (sic) they're all copyrighted by Apple. You don't have rights to use them on your website or your Android app, for example.
Just because they're on the Unicode website doesn't mean Unicode owns them. It's just a resource to be aware of how emoji can appear differently in different sets.
Unless you can point out a column that is specifically open source.
Apple provides a copyrighted image for U+1F600 GRINNING FACE.
Google also provides a copyrighted image for U+1F600 GRINNING FACE. And so on.
If you want to use Apple's image for U+1F600, your use either has to be “fair use” or Apple has to grant you a license. For example, Apple's app store guidelines explicitly grant you the following license:
> 4.5.6 Apps may use Unicode characters that render as Apple emoji in their app and app metadata. Apple emoji may not be used on other platforms or embedded directly in your app binary.
Emojis are part of unicode but the actual image representations of the unicode characters are created and owned by platforms like microsoft or apple.
You can use the platform emojies on platforms that have and support them but you can't freely use them as in you can't redistribute them so you can't host or use them on your website without licensing issues.
Its like a font like Akurrat you can use it if the platform provides it but if you are providing it you need a licence.
No fonts actually include emoji to any significant extent, and definitely not in colour.
Instead, OSes use a font fallback list where other fonts are substituted in for characters that are missing, and each OS provides one font that includes all the emoji as colour bitmaps.
There's various ways how to do those in fonts. I think Apple uses bitmaps. Microsoft uses several overlaid glyphs in different colors. And there's also a way of embedding SVG as glyphs in fonts.
Implementation might be a bit different because they are coloured but essentially yea. Whoever designed the icons or paid them too would own the licensing on them. I think most people think of fonts as free because they are soo ubiquitous but I have been caught out using licensed fonts on a site without the license.
They even include a number of that aren't in Unicode (yet?), like this Trump emoji [1]. They are allocated in the Private Use Zone of Unicode, so there shouldn't be any collisions with future unicode additions.
Good. I don't need my pistol emoji replaced with a squirt gun any more than I need the word pistol in this sentence replaced by my keyboard, my browser, my OS, my font, or anyone else who isn't me who wants to dictate how I think and how I express my thoughts.
Unfortunately, it's not "your" pistol emoji; it's someone else's, that you're reading on your device. And likewise, the expression of your thoughts is already controlled by the emoji font installed by the other person.
I also think it's a silly change that software vendors had absolutely no business making, but I am afraid that the battle is largely lost. All popular platforms now render the pistol as a squirt gun. Rendering it differently on your own computer achieves little.
Very strange that OpenMoji seemingly calls it a "water pistol" while continuing to render a revolver, however. That's surely going to annoy everyone...
Right. Everyone would complain if the message "squirt gun fight" where rendered "pistols at dawn" or vice versa. There's going to be ambiguity in any language, and to make it worse, most adults are not native speakers of emoji.
Generally, I really very much like the style. I wonder about the skin tones and inclusion. I only see yellow supported.
There's an argument to be made that just having 1 unrealistic color could be more inclusive than many skin tones, but the characteristics of the people look white in general. Like, even the curly haired person. They just look like white people. I'm white, but this doesn't seem very inclusive.
if you click on individual emoji's you can see the skin tone variants for it. You can filter for only emojis with skin tone variants using the "All Emoji <Filter Icon>" button :)
Twitter emoji (discord uses these also) are open source: https://twemoji.twitter.com/
Both of these are very consistent and good open source emoji. I think in the past a lot of these projects that were not backed by companies eventually devolved into a paid product that was no longer open source, but I'm hopeful that openmoji continues down the FOSS path.