Elaborating further on my previous response, I think Claws Mail also has an
unnecessarily strange and off-putting name and logo.
Claws are sharp instruments of imposing harm. In everyday speech, the word
when applied to people is harshly negative: "Get your claws off my such and
such." Having and using claws not only imparts characteristics like
aggression, but is also dehumanizing. Why would anyone want to apply such
things to himself?
And then the logo. http://www.claws-mail.org/img/sc-bar-right.png
A green, reptilian foot or hand bursting out from within a globe to grab some
mail envelopes. Humans tend to be repelled by reptiles. And since the claws
have done harm to the world in the picture, they were a sinister force
lurking from within it before they emerged. Their grasp on the envelopes
also seems to be aggressive, as if they are seizing someone else's mail.
Finally, as if all that weren't enough, the official Claws Project website
has this already-terrible logo over an even worse slogan or motto: "it
bites!" Directly implying aggression and harm in any language, and in
colloquial American English, also specifically implies that the product in
question is of very bad quality!
WHY do free software projects do this to themselves, and to the free software
movement in general?!?
At this point, discussion of Claws' limitations like inability to write HTML
email, is superfluous.
