Xsnow

Xsnow is a software application that was originally created as a virtual greeting card for Macintosh systems back in 1984. In 1993, the concept was ported to the X Window System as Xsnow, and was included on a number of Linux distributions in the late 1990s.

Licensing

Even though Xsnow was distributed with earlier versions of Linux, its most recent versions are shareware Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X ports with added features. The Unix-based ports include the source code in order to allow compiling to other platforms, but the software is not considered free software in the strictest sense.

License

"Xsnow is available freely and you may give it to other people as is, but I retain all rights. Therefore it does not classify as 'Public Domain' software. It *is* allowed to package Xsnow for Unix/Linux distributions, CD-Roms etc, and to make the necessary changes to makefiles etc. to facilitate this."

Variants

* At least one free variant with source code has been published for Windows by Revenger, Inc. This version is snow-only and does not use code from the Xsnow codebase.
* MacPorts has a source code build for Mac OS X that's not the shareware version.

See also

* XPenguins

External links

* [http://dropmix.xs4all.nl/rick/Xsnow/ Xsnow homepage] : free & shareware versions
* [http://www.bebits.com/app/1804 Xsnow for BeOS]
* [http://db.macports.org/port/show/3957 Xsnow for Mac OS X] : independent build
* [http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/X11/screensavers/ Older copy of Xsnow on IBiblio]
* [http://www.monctoncomputerservice.com/revenger_inc/download.html Revenger Inc's variant] : Windows "snow.exe"