Hello everyone,
Sure - it all depends on how the final mascot is designed. That may even
be more relevant than the creature we choose to start with.
I have seen this topic a few weeks ago and kindly asked Nicolas, my
coworker, who is a graphic designer specialized in advertising content
working for Pixinko, to think to a mascot that could suit LibreOffice needs.
He checked the whole thread to see the propositions you made. However,
he thinks birds should be avoided as most of FOSS software have such a
similar logo and important companies have mail applications whose logo
are basically representing a bird.
So he came up with the idea of "beaver" (castor) [1].
Here are a few advantages for this kind of animal that could match both
LibreOffice vision and the way the LibreOffice community works towards
this project.
* Beavers are ingenious builders who can change the course of rivers.
LibreOffice contributes towards changing mentality and provides an
alternative to the go-to Microsoft's solution.
"Changing the course of rivers" can also be an analogy to build up
dreams. The Document Foundation marks a milestone with this project: the
dream to have a complete independent foundation has come true on
February 17th, 2012, an idea grown from the OOo old ages when Sun was
still the parent/sponsoring company.
* The beaver is a builder who has real power to change his environment,
change the course of things and life.
Quite related to the previous idea, but LibreOffice, more than ever,
can make this happen. LOOL (CODE) has shown great progress.
* Beavers are nibbling wood all day long.
LibreOffice nibbles as well, but market shares. In September 2016,
according to a survey from Collabora[2], LibreOffice reached 120
millions users, which isn't negligible.
* The beaver is small but powerful.
Compared to the work force big companies like Microsoft can put into
practice, despite its size, the LibreOffice community hasn't to blush
from the comparison.
Look at the way TDF forced (in some way) Microsoft to offer the
ability to install Office Web Apps on our own server, just because
Nextcloud + LOOL was a quite powerful free alternative.
* Despite its size, a beaver can modify its living space in depth within
a few days.
Look at the way the LibreOffice project can move things on rapidly. On
the infrastructure size for example. You need more Tinderboxes VM for
deeper tests? This is a task done in a few hours.
* The beaver does not ask questions, he simply acts.
LibreOffice is a meritocratic project. Don't wait for other to fix the
issue for you, just solve it and everyone will benefit from it. This is
the way community and paid developers are working for the project.
* Patient work, but effective.
This took some time to refactor the LibreOffice code, but we can say
this task is mostly behind us now. We can now focus on more interesting
stuff like the UI.
* Trees are the base of paper.
LibreOffice is a tool to craft our paper/letter to our needs, the same
applies for beavers, he craft the tool to his/her needs.
I remember you had a NextCloud instance somewhere for design related
stuffs, but I can't find it any more. This is why I hosted the
propositions to my Google Drive account [3].
Please note the possibilities are endless, the eyes from proposition 5
can be mixed with the pencil from proposition 4 for example.
I'm waiting for your reviews.
If you have any questions wrt. communication and advertising or need
more explanation towards the choices regarding this animal, I'll let my
coworker, Nicolas, answer as this is basically his job 
Looking forward to see a work designed by Pixinko used by such a big
open source community
NB.: Please put me in cc when replying as this email address is not
subscribed to the mailing lists.
Regards,
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver
[2]
https://www.collaboraoffice.com/community-en/updated-libreoffice-growth-infographic-2016/
[3]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5AYDzHdw6bQS2tuOGEwOEd5eEU/view?usp=sharing
