Artwork Suggestion

[CharmCityCrab]

Right now, it looks like the Fossa Mail logo is a highly realistic fossa- which seems similar in appearance, to, well, a rodent or a weasel. I think it must be the product of a good artist in that he or she very successfully recreates the look of an actual rodent type creature.

However, a lot of people are a little freaked out by rodents and such or otherwise have bad associations with them (Plague carriers, uninvited "house guests" eating through walls and leaving rodent feces all over, etc.) and may find a highly realistic rodent type thing staring back at them from their desktop and/or taskbar to be a little off-putting.

So, my suggestion isn't to necessarily ditch the idea of a using a fossa as a logo, but rather to consider anthropomorphizing him. You know, like Mickey Mouse or the GIMP (Photoshop type software) rodent. Friendly and cartoonish and/or with some human-type attributes, but still a fossa.

I know MoonChild and some others here are into creating artwork featuring animals who have some human attributes, so maybe this would be something people would be eager to volunteer for if the devs are alright with considering a change?

It's just a thought.

I think it'd make the software a stronger competitor for some Thunderbird users looking for a similar program with Thunderbird's future now in doubt.

[loxodont]

I like that marmot. First it looked a bit odd to me, because next to other "modern", stylized desktop icons it seemed quite different, but now I like it very much, graphically, and combined with PM bubble it fits really well to my blueish Mint background.
Until now it didn't occur to me to associate that animal with rats and shit, but if I think twice, what about fox worms, bats pee, mice, ... humans? They all could easily pull thoughts about diseases and other bad things.
Might be icon graphics have an impact on usage, but I don't think Fossa Mail looks so scary.

[Moonchild]

A Fossa is not a rodent. It doesn't even look like one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossa_%28animal%29

[loxodont]

wikipedia says:

The fossa is the largest mammalian carnivore on the island of Madagascar and has been compared to a small cougar.

That's what I was thinking of when I first saw it in FM's about window.

BTW, it eats rodents

[Lucio Chiappetti]

A Fossa is not a rodent

I am a Pale moon user not a Fossamail one, so I never bothered to enquire where the package took its name from (and I never heard about such animal until today), though I often wondered why it had such a strange (and somewhat unpleasant) name. In Italian the word "fossa" means ditch (or trench as in oceanic trench), and in particularly the hole for a grave in a cemetery ("finire nella fossa" => "end in the grave","die"), also a "fossa biologica" is a septic tank, that's why I said "somewhat unpleasant" or unappealing for a potential italian user.

[Moonchild]

Pretty much any short word will likely have some weird or negative connotations in other languages -- it's unavoidable

As for the software name:

Fossa - the animal
FOSS - Free and Open Source Software

So, I thought it was a good name for the program

[Weboh]

Well, now I finally know how FossaMail got its name. It's probably too late to change the name at this point, and I'm probably the only "complaining" about it, but I think something like "Saturnalia" or "Bright Sun" or something would be better for it, for consistency's sake with Pale Moon (like the way Mozilla has FireFox and Thunderbird--you can tell they both come from the same company).