电子剑羚欧阳理碧 (Libbie the Cyber Oryx) 原本是我为自由开源的办公套件 LibreOffice 的吉祥物比赛设计的投稿方案。大家习惯直接叫她 Libbie (理碧)。

设计理念

Libbie 的种族是阿拉伯剑羚。她是一位白领，对应 LibreOffice 的办公套件特点。她的造型和配色根据 LibreOffice 的图标和标志色设计。

这套图包括彩色和黑白各 21 张小图。包括了核心概念、办公软件、办公室题材的小图，深色主题的黑色毛色版本和男性版本的额外设计各 1 张。全部图像以 Open Document Foundation (开放文档基金会，LibreOffice 的上级机构) 的黑三角文档图标为灵感，全部以三角形色块构成。

备受质疑而被取消的比赛

然而这次吉祥物比赛却由于主办方的一些可疑的操作，导致入围决赛的方案基本是质量低劣的抄袭作品，外加一个疑似主办方内定的方案 (绿色的章鱼，在入围决赛后它的设计还悄然发生了更改)。而 Libbie 和其他质量较高的方案则被投稿结束后才新增的规则 (不得在画面中出现 LibreOffice 的图标) 而直接剔除出局。

因为上述操作过于离谱，后来他们又编造出“理碧的得票数太低才没有进入下一轮”的理由，却不肯公布投票结果。而这又引出了另一个可疑的操作——LibreOffice 的活动组织方在展示投稿作品的时候只展示了投稿中的其中一张图，这对于像 Libbie 这样有多张图片构成的方案是非常不公平的。可以说他们要么完全不尊重投稿者的热情和劳动，要么从一开始就不想举办一场公平的比赛。

由于 Libbie 在发表后得到了大家的喜爱，许多人为她的遭遇打抱不平，以至于引爆了 LibreOffice 的一场公关危机。社区中不乏声音认为他们这个活动从一开始就是一个公关骗局，打算献祭我们这些参赛者的作品来成全他们的内定方案。LibreOffice 方面最终不得已选择了终止比赛了事。

我认为 LibreOffice 方面在事后发表的声明毫无诚意，根本没有意识到自己的错误，只是迫于压力不得不做出某种回应。这个声明对于这次活动为什么会发生如此严重的问题只字不提，却在本来就已经惜墨如金的声明中花了整整一段文字，在本该道歉承认错误的同时话锋一转，无端指责“社区有人想要推进自己支持的吉祥物当选”——“我们做错了，可是你们也有错”。这根本不是道歉应有的态度。

我不接受他们虚伪、空洞的道歉。而且在认识到他们的为人之后我已经不在乎他们的道歉了。我参加这次比赛的目的是支持 LibreOffice，阻碍它的发展并非我本意，所以我在社交网络上也没有对此事发表太多评价。

事后

由于 LibreOffice 要求参赛作品必须以 CC0 许可证 (知识共享-0 公共领域) 发表，我也不想收回成命，所以 Libbie 就这样进入了公共领域。任何人都可以使用 Libbie 的设计来做任何事情，没有任何限制。

Libbie 也因此得以在一些独立游戏中以客串角色的方式登场 (Petal Crash、Freedom Planet 2)，还在一个自制洛克人游戏中露一小脸。社区的人们依然记得 Libbie，时不时还会提及一下她的悲剧。

尽管已经过去多年，但在准备这套 Libbie 设计的图像时我依然深感悲哀和委屈。因此我决定要把事情的经过写下来，既是对自己过去的送别，也是对未来自己的警示。

我当时正处于创作低谷，本来就深陷自我怀疑之中。我是抱着响应自由软件运动的目的，向提供一个画师力所能及的贡献的心态，顶着巨大的压力花了一个多月的时间精心设计绘制了这套图。或许我也在潜意识中想通过这样的方式向自己证明自己的能力。我在 Libbie 身上倾注了巨大的热爱，结果却被以这种方式背叛了——在 LibreOffice 的眼中 Libbie 似乎只是一个阻碍，他们迫不及待地把她像垃圾一样扔出窗外。

更令我没有想到的是，在这件事发生之后，尽管我得到了社区的同情，却有很多画师，甚至是相熟的画师，留言质疑我为什么要参加比赛，“明知道这种无稿酬的投稿比赛就是对画师群体的剥削，你参加了就是在干扰市场，你自己一开始就是为了想通过这种方式搏出位，落得此下场是你活该”。这些人对志愿者精神嗤之以鼻，仿佛我的失败让他们自我感觉相当良好。尤其是来自熟人的指责和嘲讽，让我的心都凉透了。

这次不公的遭遇导致我在接下来的许多年中都深陷在巨大的自我怀疑和对这个世界的怀疑中不能自拔。经过这次教训和多年痛苦的反思之后，我基本已经得出、接受了以下结论：

• 遵循心中的良知做事，不要被功利心所迷惑，存在的意义不在于心之外
• 警惕那些伪装成卫道士的掠夺者
• 任何人都没有“理所应当”地得到什么的资格，无论诚意和能力
• 关注做事的过程就够了，那是自己唯一能够控制，并且有责任的环节
• 事情结果是自己控制范围之外的，随它去吧
• 至少有一件事情我会一直提醒自己记得——我废寝忘食地绘制 Libbie 的那一个月是充实而幸福的。这种幸福不来自 LibreOffice 会不会接纳她，而在于我的心是毫无保留地奉献了出去的，这可能是我第一次感觉到了“无我”的境界。

Libbie 这件事应该是塑造了我人格的关键事件之一了。它击碎了我的幼稚，迫使我正视了自己和世界的真实。尽管它是一次遗憾，但它的深远影响却应该是正面的。我也有计划让理碧在个人作品“千变灵兽”中担任较为重要的配角，让她能在我自己的作品中活出精彩的人生。

Libbie the Cyber Oryx was the mascot candidate I designed for LibreOffice’s mascot contest. Now people often refer to her as Libbie. LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite.

Design Concepts

Libbie is an Arabian oryx and a white collar lady to match LibreOffice’s purpose. Her look and color scheme were based on LibreOffice’s icon and VI color.

Libbie’s complete concept includes 21 pictures, each has a color and a black and white version. They cover Libbie’s core concepts, LibreOffice’s sub applications, some office situations, dark theme and male version. All pictures are formed by triangles, which was inspired by the Open Document Foundation (LibreOffice’s upstream project)’s black triangle icon.

The Cancelled Contest

The LibreOffice mascot contest was supposed to be a celebration and showcase of free and open source spirit, but it was not to be. The host party took many questionable actions — change of rules after the submission date, change of design of a particular candidate after entering the final round, not disclosing the voting results, etc.

The new rule forbid the usage of LibreOffice icon. And just like that, Libbie and many other high quality entries were eliminated. Those entered the final round were mostly low-quality, uncompetitive, or even outright stolen/stock arts. A green octopus candidate stood out because it quietly changed its design after entering the final round to meet the new rules. People suspected it to be LibreOffice’s internal submission.

As anyone would have expected, LibreOffice immediately faced a huge backlash as soon as they announced the final candidates. Many people stated their concerns and pointed out LibreOffice’s misconducts. And because Libbie was clearly a community favorite, people en masse questioned why LibreOffice wanted to eliminate her so badly.

Since the rule change was received poorly, LibreOffice then came up with another explanation, claiming Libbie didn’t have enough vote — but they never released the vote result. Not only that, it brought up another misconduct on their part — LibreOffice only showcased a single picture from each submission (we were never told about this beforehand). It was obviously unfair to the submissions that contained multiple images and descriptions to explain their concept. Either the LibreOffice people paid zero respect to our passion and labor, or they never intended to run a fair contest from the beginning.

Naturally, no one would buy into their explanation. Some suspected the contest was a public stunt by LibreOffice — they wanted to sacrifice all volunteer submissions to push forward their internal green octopus mascot idea. LibreOffice ended up cancelling the contest.

I don’t think LibreOffice’s cancelation announcement was done in a good faith. It had not even a single ounce of sincerity. They never truly acknowledged their misconducts. There was no explanation of what exactly happened and why. But when it was time to apologize (which they were obviously unwilling to do), they couldn’t wait until the sentence is finished to start accusing the community of pushing forward an agenda. “we were wrong, and so did you”. That was not how a sincere apology should look like.

I do not accept their empty, hypocritical “apology”. But I also do not care anymore, as I finally saw what they truly are now. I participated in this mascot contest out of good will, to help the free software movement. I wanted to support LibreOffice, not to hinder its development. So I avoided talking about the incident for many years.

Aftermath

LibreOffice required the mascot contest entries to license their works under Creative Common Zero (Public Domain). I did not want to walk back my decision, so Libbie has been in the public domain since. Anyone can use Libbie to do anything, there is no limit.

Libbie appeared in some indie games (Petal Crash、Freedom Planet 2), and a fan made Mega Man game, MAGMML: Episode Zero. People from the community remember Libbie fondly, and her tragedy is still being brought up from time to time.

Even though many years have passed since the incident, I still felt deep sadness and grievance when I was preparing Libbie’s pictures for this post. I came to the conclusion that I should write down what happened, as a send-off of the past self, and as a cautionary tale to the future self.

At the time of the incident, I was in the middle of a low period as an artist, and I was already mentally stressed to a breaking point. I answered LibreOffice’s call of action, as though it was a chance to contribute something useful for free software movement. By doing that, I might also hope to prove to myself that I was still capable as an artist. It took me at least one month to finish drawing Libbie’s pictures. I poured my heart and soul into Libbie, but my good will was betrayed — Libbie was more like a nuisance to LibreOffice’s agenda, and she was thrown out of the window like a piece of trash.

Not only that, although many people sympathized with me and Libbie, a considerable amount of artists (some were even acquaintances at the time) criticized me for entering the contest. They accused me of participating in a free contest for fame, disrupting “the market”, causing artists like them to not get commissioned — for that I was an accomplice of the predatory corporations, and I deserved my ill fate. They despised my volunteer spirit, and they appeared to feel very good for themselves because of my failure. It hurts more because some of those words came from whom I considered friends. I was very disappointed by those people. I just could not believe someone can be so selfish and inconsiderate.

This incident magnified my mental stress significantly. I was trapped in deep self-doubt and disillusionment of the world in general for many years to come. Through countless painful flashbacks and reflections, lessons were learned:

• Follow your conscience, you know what’s the right thing to do. Do not be clouded by vanity. Meaning of life cannot be sought outside your heart.
• Beware of the predators that pretend to be advocates of good values.
• No one is entitled to anything, regardless of your good will or ability.
• Only pay attention to the process of what you do — it is the only part you have control of. Your responsibility lies there, and it ends there.
• The result of what you do is out of your control, just let it be.
• There is one thing I will always remember — that one month when I was drawing Libbie, I was happy, and I felt very fulfilled. The happiness didn’t come from whether LibreOffice would accept her, but because I was working with my true heart to the point I forgot my “self”.

The Libbie incident had a profound effect on my personality. It shattered my naïveness, forcing me to look into the reality of myself and the world. It was a sad story, but in the long run, I think the net effect is very positive.

I’m going to give Libbie a role in my original projects, so that she can have a spectacular life in my story.