Tyson Tan

Free and Open Source

Free and Open Source

This page showcases the mascots I designed for Free and Open Source projects, along with my other volunteer work in the FOSS community.

What is Free and Open Source?

A program is Free Software if it was released under a free software license.
Open Source means the source code of a program can be freely accessed.

A Free Software License permits all people to freely use, modify, and distribute a program and its source code. Common examples are: GPL, APL, MPL, MIT, BSD, etc. Free software licenses ensure programs and their source codes to be public resources. On principle, all people can participate in the development and provide other contributions. Free software licenses are the legal safeguards of the modern Open Source Software Development Model.

Almost every modern software has some free software parts in them — the engines of most modern web browsers, the kernels of Linux and Android operating systems. Most popular apps are built on top of some free software frameworks and libraries. Free software programs are everywhere. They are the bolts and gears of modern information systems.

The free and open source ideal is friendly for community members to participate in a FOSS project. As a volunteer, I designed mascots and provided Chinese translations for some FOSS projects.

Mascots

More: FOSS Mascots Gallery

Chinese Translations

When using free and open-source software, some apps I use quite often lack high-quality Chinese translations. If such a project accepts translation, I usually provide a complete simplified Chinese translation. This not only improves UI consistency for myself, but also helps Chinese users with limited English skills get started.

Due to project contributor policies, codebase changes, or branch updates, my translator credit may not appear in some projects. Below are only the projects where I made notable contributions, along with brief notes on how I got involved.

Krita

Krita is a free and open source digital painting application. I started using it after switching from Windows to Linux, as it was (and still is) the most feature-rich free alternative to Photoshop. I designed Krita’s mascot, Kiki, and created the startup image for each subsequent version. To support Chinese Krita artists, I retranslated it in 2018 and have since maintained its Chinese translations — including the software, documentation, website, and Steam description.

In addition, I updated the Krita’s page on Chinese Wikipedia equivalents, wrote articles about Krita on local platforms, answered common questions, collected community feedback and passed it on to the development team, and reported bugs on behalf of users who are not familiar with English.

Before contributing to Krita’s Chinese translation, I used mostly English interface — due to poor Chinese translations in many mainstream Linux software at the time. Krita sparked my journey into translating free and open-source software into Chinese, and I have switched to Chinese interface ever since to better understand what users’ actual experience.

KDE

KDE is a long-standing free and open source software community. KDE hosts many well-known free software projects and provided frameworks for them. The forementioned Krita, as well as the following digiKam, Kdenlive, Kate, Okular and Marble are all KDE applications. KDE also developed Plasma, a popular free Desktop Environment for Linux and other free operating systems.

I became associated with KDE because I redesigned its mascot, Konqi. Soon after, I adopted the Plasma Desktop and its companion apps. I have since contributed to and maintained Simplified Chinese translations for Plasma, many other KDE applications, and the KDE.org website.

digiKam

digiKam is a free and open source photo management application. I use it daily at work for photo management and batch image processing. Prior to my involvement, digiKam’s Chinese translations had many missing and wrong strings. I retranslated everything, and have since been maintaining digiKam’s Simplified Chinese translations (application only).

Kate Editor

Kate is a free and open source advance text editor. I first got to know Kate because it is the default text editor of Plasma. Secondly, its maintainer, Christoph Cullmann, enthusiastically invited me to design a mascot and a new icon for Kate. I participated in correcting, completing, and have since been maintaining Kate’s Simplified Chinese translations (application only). I have also designed Kate’s mascot and its new logo.

Okular

Okular is a free and open source document reader. I got to know Okuklar because it is the default PDF viewer of Plasma. Prior to my involvement, Okular’s Chinese translations had many missing and wrong strings, especially in the annotation modules. I retranslated everything, and have since been maintaining Okular’s Simplified Chinese translations (application only).

Marble

Marble is a free and open source virtual earth and map viewer. The forementioned digiKam uses its components to show where the photos were taken on a map. Prior to my involvement, Marble’s Chinese translations had many missing and wrong strings. I retranslated everything, and have since been maintaining Marble’s Simplified Chinese translations (application only).

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a free and open source photo management application. I got involved with it because I thought it was useful to many people and hoped to improve the quality of its Chinese translation. Prior to my involvement, Kdenlive’s Chinese translations had many missing and wrong strings. I retranslated everything, and maintained Kdenlive’s Simplified Chinese translations (application only) for a few years.

Due to the project’s increasing size and my lack of expertise in video editing, I have reached my limit. Starting mid-March 2025, I will no longer provide Chinese translation for Kdenlive.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a free and open-source video transcoder. I came to know it because I use it at work for converting videos.

Handbrake’s translations for Windows, macOS, and Linux are independent of each other. Before my involvement, the Chinese translation in the Linux version was poor. The other two versions were better, but still needed works.

In September 2025, I contributed by correcting and completing the Chinese translation for the Linux version and reworked the other two versions for consistency in glossaries and style.

Qt

Qt is a free and open source cross-platform software development toolkit. The forementioned KDE Frameworks and many commonly used applications are developed based on Qt. I came to know Qt first because it is the underlying framework of almost every software I use daily, and second because a small part of Krita’s interface directly uses Qt components and can only be translated through Qt itself.

I contributed once by correcting and completing Qt’s Simplified Chinese translations.

gPhoto

gPhoto is a collection of free and open-source digital camera drivers and applications. libgphoto is its library, and gtkam is its graphical front-end program. Most free and open-source software uses libgphoto to download, upload, and delete photos from digital cameras (or digital frames), and even remote control some cameras to take pictures from the computer.

I learned about gPhoto due to missing translations for the digital camera interface (PTP devices) in Plasma and digiKam, which were components of gPhoto. I found that its Chinese translation was lacking. In October 2025, I contributed by correcting and completing the Chinese translations for gphoto2, libgphoto2, and gtkam.

libexif

EXIF is a metadata format for storing associated information in image and audio files like JPEG and TIFF. It records capturing parameters, GPS location, and user annotations from digital cameras, as well as storing various tag information in other types of media files. Libexif is a free open-source library for reading and writing EXIF metadata, widely used by free and open-source image processing programs.

When I was translating digiKam, I gained an understanding of EXIF and its significance. While working on libgphoto2 on Translation Project, I noticed that libexif’s translation was also hosted there, but its Chinese version was poorly done. In October 2025, I contributed by correcting and completing the Chinese translation of both libexif and its executable program exif.

CUPS

CUPS is a free and open source printer backend. Most operating systems except Windows use CUPS to carry out printing tasks. Although I rarely use printers on Linux, I have decided to improve its Chinese translation to assist Chinese users under open-source operating systems.

I contributed once by correcting and completing the Simplified Chinese translations for CUPS and some of its printer drivers.

Gutenprint

Gutenprint is a collection of free and open-source printer drivers that supports thousands of printer models on Linux. I discovered it on the Translation Project website while translating gphoto2 and exif, and took it as an extension of the CUPS translation effort.

Before my involvement, the Chinese translation of Gutenprint was in a bad shape. I contributed by correcting and completing it in October 2025.

SANE

SANE is a free and open-source scanner backend for Linux. I got involved with SANE because I use a scanner under Linux, but SANE lacked Chinese translation for my scanner. I contributed once by correcting and completing the Simplified Chinese translations of SANE and some of its drivers.