Showing posts with label Big Thigh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Thigh. Show all posts

Monday, February 15, 2010

in two piece bikini



















Government of India is giving them special status as they bring in lot of foregin exchange money into India. Specially through remittances from UAE, Saudi Arabia and other countries. Guys from India like to follow them, because they look beautiful and seductively attractive. Check out the recent Hubpages or HubGalleries of these NRI desi girl seriesBiggest NRI population is in United Arab Emirates – estimated to be around 14 lakhs (1.4 millions) with another million or so in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, and other gulf countries.There is also a large population of desi living in Caribbean. Way back in 1838 to 1917, when slavery was abolished, there was a huge demand for labor and manpower. Caribbean was under British and so was India at that time. So the British under its Raj, brought ship loads of Indians to work in the Caribbean as laborers. The first ship arrived in 5 May 1838. Majority of the Indian arrived from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And an equal numbers from South India from the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. In some parts of Caribbean, Indian origin population are highest, and in rest of the Caribbean island, it is ranked 2nd.But the most sort after are desi NRI living in United States and other western countries.Here are some beautiful photo collection of NRI desi girls enjoying their holidays aboard in their swimwear and bikini. Hope you too enjoy. In hubPages, there are several hubs devoted to NRI girls - Non-Resident Indians. Photo collection of girls who have migrated aboard couple of generation ago are most wanted on the net. In various forum , social networking sites, there are such hot collection of photos - some are partying girls - and a lot more are on the beach side. They are willing to pose in seductive dress to please the ever hungry India young boys.for those young boys, presenting here are some hot collection of NRI - our own Non-resident Indian girls partying aboard. The original desi girls are either born and brought up there or have moved years ago!Enjoy and send in your comments. Also you can add or send you own such photos for inclusion into my Gallery No.2. attractive. Check out the recent Hubpages or HubGalleries of these NRI desi girl seriesBiggest NRI population is in United Arab Emirates – estimated to be around 14 lakhs (1.4 millions) with another million or so in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, and other gulf countries.There is also a large population of desi living in Caribbean. Way back in 1838 to 1917, when slavery was abolished, there was a huge demand for labor and manpower. Caribbean was under British and so was India at that time. So the British under its Raj, brought ship loads of Indians to work in the Caribbean as laborers. The first ship arrived in 5 May 1838. Majority of the Indian arrived from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And an equal numbers from South India from the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. In some parts of Caribbean, Indian origin population are highest, and in rest of the Caribbean island, it is ranked 2nd.But the most sort after are desi NRI living in United States and other western countries.Here are some beautiful photo collection of NRI desi girls enjoying their holidays aboard in their swimwear and bikini. Hope you too enjoy. In hubPages, there are several hubs devoted to NRI girls - Non-Resident Indians. Photo collection of girls who have migrated aboard couple of generation ago are most wanted on the net. In various forum , social networking sites, there are such hot collection of photos - some are partying girls - and a lot more are on the beach side. They are willing to pose in seductive dress to please the ever hungry India young boys.for those young boys, presenting here are some hot collection of NRI - our own Non-resident Indian girls partying aboard. The original desi girls are either born and brought up there or have moved years ago!Enjoy and send in your comments. Also you can add or send you own such photos for inclusion into my Gallery No.2. attractive. Check out the recent Hubpages or HubGalleries of these NRI desi girl seriesBiggest NRI population is in United Arab Emirates – estimated to be around 14 lakhs (1.4 millions) with another million or so in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, and other gulf countries.There is also a large population of desi living in Caribbean. Way back in 1838 to 1917, when slavery was abolished, there was a huge demand for labor and manpower. Caribbean was under British and so was India at that time. So the British under its Raj, brought ship loads of Indians to work in the Caribbean as laborers. The first ship arrived in 5 May 1838. Majority of the Indian arrived from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And an equal numbers from South India from the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. In some parts of Caribbean, Indian origin population are highest, and in rest of the Caribbean island, it is ranked 2nd.But the most sort after are desi NRI living in United States and other western countries.Here are some beautiful photo collection of NRI desi girls enjoying their holidays aboard in their swimwear and bikini. Hope you too enjoy. In hubPages, there are several hubs devoted to NRI girls - Non-Resident Indians. Photo collection of girls who have migrated aboard couple of generation ago are most wanted on the net. In various forum , social networking sites, there are such hot collection of photos - some are partying girls - and a lot more are on the beach side. They are willing to pose in seductive dress to please the ever hungry India young boys.for those young boys, presenting here are some hot collection of NRI - our own Non-resident Indian girls partying aboard. The original desi girls are either born and brought up there or have moved years ago!Enjoy and send in your comments. Also you can add or send you own such photos for inclusion into my Gallery No.2. There is large population of Indian who are living aboard. Most favored are the ones who are in the United States, followed by Non-resident Indians in Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait etc...Even more popular are the NRI girls. They tend to live their life to its fullest. They do freak out and enjoy their life. Here is Photo Set of NRI desi girls enjoying their holidays aboard. Some are in bikinis and at sea. artying is cool! That was the trend until recently. Every other person on earth wanted to be seen at one party or the other. And the trend of appearing in Page 3 was rampant across all cities and even towns! Web is place where you can find photos of all those partying bellys! These pictures have become most watched photos on the internet. Especially the class of Indians, who are deprived of party culture! They would lay their eyes to any party photo of sexy dressed party girls and women!You might be dreaming about joining such parties and cheers with those sexy willing party girls! Partying is considered COOL! But that was till recently. There is too much partying going on these days. And party is being turning to be uncool. Celebrities are not interested any more in partying – even if they do party, they make sure that their pictures are not clicked and published in page 3! They simply resort to PLEASE PHOTO MAT LO! Tack ticks.But certain sections of Indian audience still admire Partying Girls and their pictures. Web is a place where you can find all kinds of parties and partying girls. Page3 Girls and women are too willing to be photographed and published in the web. Presentng to you here is some of the Parting girls photos which did not find way to Page 3!Till recently partying and socializing was considered an opportunity to display the designer cloths and taste you are into. But partying days are over. Several celebrities have given up partying. And they don’t want to seen in every party happening in the city!“Work hard, party harder” is no more valid these days! People tend to be choosy in going to parties these days. They wanted to have quality time when it comes to spending their time at the party.These party girls wanted to be seen less and less – and be in demand always. Saree Photos of Real Life Indian Girls is my special episode for my Fans Club Members. Photos of girls in saree especially excluding actress that is nonactress photos is a very difficult thing. The albums and photos that i got from my friends in india helped me create this photo gallery of very nice pictures which are of normal life and it may also seem sexy to people beased on their likes. If you have not yet joined my club which is completely free, see my profile page. More cllections of photos of actress and saree and set mundu specials will be coming very soon. Tamila and Malayalam has got lot of beautiful people who are beautiful that celebrities. Everyone of you will love to see the best collection of Non Resident Beautiful Indian Girls Photos. Indian actress will be nothing before girls like this abroad. I am aslo such a girl who is in Dubai so i know what will be inthe minds of them. Enjoying every minute is the policy of such teens, They have lot of money with them given by parents which they want to finish some way by giving party to their friends or attending marriages. Indian Girls in Dubai Hot Pictures Series 40. By now everyone has seen most of my photos collection of celebrities and housewives as i have been hubbing for the past 10 months. New face models becoem popular through albums and i also make their photo galleries but my fans are more interseted with photos of Real life Situation Photos.Indian girls will be the main essence in these hubs. May be you think that they are models or actress. They are not at all celebrities or any well known actress, but they are ordinary ever loving bauties who are just married. India is always rich with beauties of this kind and in these editions most of these women are from rich families and these pictures were taken by them when they were on pleasure trips or tours to places for enjoying their luxurious life. Saree photos showing the traditional value of Indian culture is also included so that its memories will not fad away on seeing modern dress like jeans and salwars. Let me join Kathy and Mark in welcoming you to this meeting on Adolescent Girls and Cross Generational Transactional Sex. Apologies for not being able to join you this morning. What I will try to do in my talk this afternoon is to build a bridge between the morning’s discussion on the prevalence and associated risks of this phenomenon and the discussions you will have in the afternoon which I understand will focus on what to do about this problem and how to move ahead. Let’s begin with some of the facts that I think were established this morning. First, we now know that cross generational transactional sex is a reality and may be more widely prevalent than we imagined in some settings and not as widely prevalent as we imagined in other settings. Second, we now know that the nature of these relationships is far more complex that we first believed. They range all the way from consensual relationships to coercive relationships, from relationships that benefit both parties, economically, socially, and/or sexually to those that are exploitative in nature. And third, we now know that sexual relationships between young adolescent women and older men pose a significant risk for younger women, a risk of HIV and other STDs. All these facts were brought home to me somewhat harshly almost ten years ago during a visit to Ibadan University in Nigeria. I vividly remember a conversation I had with five teenage girls, between the ages of 17 to 19 years, who quite bluntly told me that they and many of their friends were in relationships with more than one man simultaneously. Upon enquiring further I learned that it was common for them to have one boyfriend who was their age who was the romantic interest but was likely to be a temporary relationship, another couple of men who served, as they called them, as “spare tires” who were typically somewhat older, fun to be with, and had the money to fulfill their teenage wants – lipstick, handbags, nail polish, etc -- and sometimes, if they were lucky, a third type, the man who they ultimately hoped to marry who was likely to be a good, reliable, stable person but not always fun. I remember listening to them with some curiosity and with the dispassionate interest of a researcher, wondering whether this choice of options meant that the girls were truly empowered or whether these were false options, an illusion of empowerment that in reality was a symptom of being trapped in a society with patriarchal and commercial values. I asked whether they were aware of the health risks involved and whether they used condoms. Feeling somewhat patronized by my question, one of them replied: “Don’t worry, we take care of ourselves. Condoms are not always possible, so we make sure we are safe from infection by taking two tablets of penicillin before each date.” Now as the mother of a 17 year old daughter, I am much less dispassionate in the face of such statements – anxious and terrified would be a more accurate description. Terrified of adolescents’ almost universal need for adventure and their sense of immortality, combined with a supposedly pragmatic, but not always informed, problem solving attitude that is cleverly designed to deny or reject any possibility of future pain or other hurtful consequences! Those of you who are parents of teenagers know what I mean. It is from this viewpoint, that of a mother of a teenage daughter, that I now see three other realities associated with this phenomenon of cross generational, transactional sex. The first reality is that this issue, more than most others, tempts us to blur the lines between the dictates of our personal morality and our professional, public health goals. And the second reality is that the unequal balance of power that typically characterizes most gender relations is exacerbated in cross-generational sexual relations by the large age and income differentials that are typical in such relationships. This extreme inequality puts adolescent women at risk of not just HIV infection and other STDs, but also violence, low self esteem, and warped and unhealthy social and psychological development. And the third reality is that the transactional nature of these relationships is in part a mimicking of the many societal institutions, both in the North and in the South, that treat a woman’s sexuality as a marketable commodity. Let us pause to reflect upon the implications of each of these three realities because I believe that in order to be effective our responses to the phenomenon of cross generational transactional sex must take them into account. Public Health Imperatives versus Morality: Let us begin with the first reality. We have all noticed that a blurring of morality with public health imperatives occurs, not just when discussing this particular type of adolescent sexual activity, but when there is any public discussion of adolescents having sex! There is something instinctive, almost primal, which makes us as adults not want to think of adolescents as sexual beings. We now know the costs of such instinctive behavior. Strong societal norms of virginity before marriage, we know, paradoxically puts young women at risk by restricting their access to information on sex and reproductive health services because they are worried that they will be thought to be sexually active. Also when strong strictures of abstinence until marriage occur in the context of a culture of silence and shame that surrounds sex, the problem is further magnified. As Deborah Haffner, ex-President of Seicus recently said in discussing the situation in the U.S. “What does it say about us as a country if we believe that sex is so dirty, that we must save it for the one we love.” Let us be clear—warning pre-adolescents of the risks of early and unsafe sexuality and promoting abstinence and delayed sexual debut during adolescence is the right thing to do – BUT such programs must be accompanied by full information about sex and how adolescents can protect themselves once they are sexually active. It is clear that in this matter we cannot let a misinterpretation of morality and religion, or for that matter our politics, stand in the way of this public health imperative. It would be immoral to do so. We know the value of information and we know through research that information on sexuality or access to sexual health services does not cause promiscuity. As one young gentleman at the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona so eloquently put it: If we believe condoms cause promiscuity, we must believe that umbrellas cause rain! But in order for sex education to seem real and meaningful to adolescents, it must go beyond the pure public health goals of disease prevention to the promotion of positive and pleasurable sex that is rooted in values that are fundamental to both AIDS prevention and to healthy personal development –I refer here to the values of consensual, respectful, responsible, and mutually satisfying sex. Sex education that is restricted to mere facts without allowing for interactive discussion about the values that are critical for healthy intimacy, does adolescents a grave disservice. Grounding information about sex in human values is particularly important if we are to successfully address the problem of cross generational transactional sex. It is also important to remember that there is a clear distinction between strictures of morality that threaten serious consequences if not adhered to and messages that underscore the need for caring and responsibility in sexual interactions. While the former instills fear and undermines self confidence, the latter provides the basis for healthy development. But for us to do any of this we must, as a first step, do all we can to end the silence and shame that surrounds sex. One way to do this is to encourage leaders from all sectors of society, who are credible and reputable to speak up about the benefits to our children and to society as a whole of talking openly and plainly about sex and plesu. At ICRW we are currently using this method of working with local leaders and spokespersons to break the silence on other taboo and sensitive subjects such as domestic violence in India and stigma about HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia, Zambia, and Tanzania, in an attempt to bring about normative change. In the case of domestic violence, this approach worked well to make the issue more visible in public discourse in India. The results for stigma have yet to be measured though we are confident that it will catalyze change in attitudes over time. Moving now to the second reality—Consequences of an Unequal Balance of Power for Health, Development, and Self Esteem: Cross generational relationships are a cause for concern not only because the age differential increases the probability that young women will be exposed to an HIV infected partner but also because the large age differential exacerbates the already existing imbalance of power that is typical in gender relations and in heterosexual relationships. This inequality can greatly compromise a young woman’s ability to control resources or make decisions that are favorable for her. The consequences are noticeable not only in terms of a reduced ability to negotiate protection against HIV and other STDs, but also in terms of increased vulnerability to sexual coercion, violence, and lowered self esteem. Thus, the goal of our efforts should not be just to increase the use of condoms in cross-generation relationships but to also reduce cross-generational relationships that exacerbate an inequality in the balance of power. In this context it is important to take note that in much of the developing world cross-generational sex most often occurs within marriage, since a large age differential between a woman and her husband is an accepted norm. Yet, marital relationships are often left out of discussions on cross generational sex. This is particularly problematic in high prevalence countries where the risk faced by a young wife due to the age differential within marriage, is likely to be the same as that in a non-marital cross generational relationship. In fact, it has been argued that young women have less leverage to negotiate protection against both disease and pregnancy within marriage than in non-marital relationships. Thus, any recommendations we make to reduce the risks associated with cross generational sex must include the situation of married adolescent girls. And any policy recommendation to decrease the age of marriage because of a delusionary belief that marriage is protective for girls, must be actively challenged. Ultimately, though, the phenomenon of cross generational transactional sex conjures up images of older men preying on the innocence of young women and exploiting their bodies. While we know this is not always true, there is a need to ensure that efforts to reduce this phenomenon include programs to promote sexual and family responsibility among men. In an effort to do just this, ICRW will soon be working with three field offices of UNICEF to implement a communications and education strategy on the role and responsibility of men in reducing girls’ and young women’s vulnerability to HIV. The idea is to appeal to men as fathers, fathers-in-law and grandfathers and to call upon them to assist in confronting the costs of the double standard of sexuality that currently requires girls to be faithful, passive, and innocent in matters regarding sex and boys to have variety in sexual partners and be sexually expert. The program will appeal to adult men to join hands with adult women to assist in empowering the girls of their nations through an intergenerational collaborative effort so that young girls can fully develop their potential without fear of infection, violence, or sexual exploitation. This approach of creating opportunities for youth and adults to work together to bring abouial change is one that ICRW has explored fairly recently. Exactly a year ago we invited 20 adult and youth leaders from around the world to together come up with recommendations for breaking the cycle of poverty that entraps generation after generation. With the help of resource persons and creative facilitators, the participants generated actionable recommendations. But more importantly, they experienced the value of joining hands across generations to solve common problems. I believe that such an exercise can be usefully replicated at the community level to tackle the problem of cross generational transactional sex. Moving on to the third reality—Sex as a Marketable Commodity: Perhaps the most shocking component of the phenomenon we are discussing today is the pragmatic way in which young women seem to be using sex as a marketable commodity in relationships that do not fall within the traditional definition of commercial sex. The automatic conclusion we draw from this is that women do this for economic survival. What we have learned is that in reality there is a continuum of economic need and that although survival motivates some young women to engage in transactional sex, for others the motives seem more akin to economic security or economic comfort – wants rather than needs. The underlying problem though is the same: women have restricted access to financial resources and they rightly perceive access to money and all that it buys as the basis for gaining power in society. This was brought home to us most starkly in a study that ICRW, in collaboration with Engender Health and in-country organizations, recently conducted in Nepal. The adolescent and adult women in those communities had a clear understanding of, and talked articulately about, the paramount importance of financial resources for acquiring power in domestic relationships, and their aspirations to acquire egree of economic stability and comfort. Yet they did not have the mobility, the education, or the skills to acquire the jobs or other opportunities to fulfill their aspirations. Many of the adolescent girls in the sample, thus, pragmatically viewed the exchange of sex for money, gifts or long-term security as the one viable and efficient way to meet their goals. Although shocking, such an attitude should come as no surprise. Societal institutions in many countries treat women’s sexuality and its outcomes as an economic commodity to be exchanged or sold. Marriage, for example, frequently involves a financial transaction or barter based on the bride’s sexual purity or proven fertility. The behavior of adolescent women is a mere reflection of this same ethic. Providing young women with the necessary education and skills to earn a livelihood and have an economic future, is likely to contribute to a reduction in the incidence of the transactional sex by directly giving women an alternative way to meet their economic needs or even their teenage wants. More importantly, though, the opportunity to have a livelihood can have an indirect impact on the incidence of transactional sex by giving young women hope for a future, a goal to be attained, and a stronger sense of self. At the international level, there is now an UN-led initiative on youth employment initiated by the Secretary-General himself and cosponsored by the International Labor Organization and the World Bank, which seeks to work with national governments to develop policies and programs to provide youth with the skills and opportunities necessary to earn a livelihood. ICRW is currently working as a part of this international initiative to determine concrete ways in which women, particularly young women, can have equal opportunities to access economic opportunities. While such initiatives to increase employment and educational opportunities are indeed necessary, we are now learning that some educational settings may increase young girls’ risk and that employment opportunities may sometimes have the effect of increasing young women’s risk of acquiring STDs, including HIV. We are learning through research that ICRW is conducting in collaboration with Princeton University and Mahidol Univeristy in Thailand, that when employment requires young women to leave home and migrate to distant places where there are no protective social networks or access to services and information, their vulnerability to infection and exploitation may be affected. It is also important to recognize that single types of economic interventions at the micro level, such as microfinance programs, while necessary may not be sufficient to bring about the economic empowerment required to reduce the incidence of transactional sex. What is required is for such micro level changes to be accompanied by macro level policy interventions that can at an aggregate level change the nature of educational and economic opportunities for women and thereby reduce the inequality of power in gender relations. As we meet here, another meeting is being hosted at ICRW that is analyzing trade policies, such as GATS and TRIPS , and their implications for reproductive health services and technologies. In conclusion, let me return to the young women I met in Nigeria and remind ourselves that the cross generational transactional sex is a complex phenomenon, associated with a wide range of underlying causes and motives, and with a variety of potential consequences and costs for young women. Any single intervention, as a result, will not suffice. As you discuss the recommendations for reducing this phenomenon this afternoon, I would encourage you to think of comprehensive efforts that integrate for example, values-based sex education with appropriate economic interventions for adolescent women, while also targeting adult men and women and encouraging them to work together to ensure the healthy social, sexual, and psychological development of their daughters. To know the exact combination of interventions that will be work in any particular context, we will need further research – research that is informed by today’s discussion. But let us draw from lessons we have learned from past experience which have shown us that economic interventions alone do not suffice to move sex workers away from prostitution. Instead, such economic interventions provide sex workers with much needed additional income. Sex workers explain that giving up prostitution is not that easy. For most it is a life style that is difficult to leave because of the indelible stigma that it leaves on those who engage in prostitution which makes it difficult for them to be accepted in more mainstream occupations. Similarly, just sex education alone for young women who are poor is not enough. In the ultimate analysis, reducing the occurrence of this phenomenon is going to require normative change in the societies in which it is prevalent. Although social change typically takes time, I am convinced that because AIDS is fatal, the social processes necessary to bring about the normative changes that are required are more likely to happen now than ever before. An essential ingredient is community mobilization and strong leadership – leaders who express a lack of tolerance for such relationships, who communicate to young women the importance of valuing their bodies and their sexuality, who foster an open and frank discussion of sex with adolescents, and who work to create equal access to educational and economic opportunities for young women. The challenge for us is to find ways to facilitate such mobilization and leadership. A challenge we must meet, because without that, we will continue to sacrifice our daughters to this terrible epidemic. This meeting is a first step in the right direction. It is important to maintain this momentum and put in place the necessary research initiatives, advocacy campaigns, and policy and project interventions that will go beyond describing the problem to determining what to do about it. I wish you luck in your discussion this afternoon as you seek to identify the priorities for the future. Thank you.





Wednesday, January 20, 2010

red hot beautiful non resident indian girl











Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer-facing hardware allow user modifications to their hardware. Free software is generally available without charge.

In practice, for software to be distributed as free software, the human-readable form of the program (the source code) must be made available to the recipient along with a notice granting the above permissions. Such a notice either is a "free software license", or a notice that the source code is released into the public domain.

The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman to satisfy the need for and to give the benefit of "software freedom" to computer users.[1] Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to provide the organizational structure to advance his Free Software ideas.

From 1998 onward, alternative terms for free software came into use. The most common are "software libre", "free and open source software" ("FOSS") and "free, libre and open source software" ("FLOSS"). The "Software Freedom Law Center" was founded in 2005 to protect and advance FLOSS.[2] The antonym of free software is "proprietary software" or "non-free software". Commercial software may be either free software or proprietary software, contrary to a popular misconception that "commercial software" is a synonym for "proprietary software". (An example of commercial free software is Red Hat Linux.)

Free software, which may or may not be distributed free of charge, is distinct from "freeware" which, by definition, does not require payment for use. The authors or copyright holders of freeware may retain all rights to the software; it is not necessarily permissible to reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute freeware.[3][4]

Since free software may be freely redistributed it is generally available at little or no cost. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as applications, support, training, customization, integration, or certification. At the same time, some business models which work with proprietary software are not compatible with free software, such as those that depend on a user paying for a license in order to lawfully use a software product.

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[edit] History

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the freedoms that are provided by free software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by hardware manufacturers who were glad that people were making software that made their hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers were formed to facilitate the exchange of software; see, for example, SHARE. By the late 1960s change was inevitable: software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive.[5] While some software might always be free, there would be a growing amount of software that was for sale only. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study and modify software. In 1980 copyright law was extended to computer programs.

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He developed a free software definition and the concept of "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all.

The economic viability of free software has been recognised by large corporations such as IBM, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.[6][7][8][9][10] Many companies whose core business is not in the IT sector choose free software for their Internet information and sales sites, due to the lower initial capital investment and ability to freely customize the application packages. Also, some non-software industries are beginning to use techniques similar to those used in free software development for their research and development process; scientists, for example, are looking towards more open development processes, and hardware such as microchips are beginning to be developed with specifications released under copyleft licenses (see the OpenCores project, for instance). Creative Commons and the free culture movement have also been largely influenced by the free software movement.

[edit] Naming

The FSF recommends using the term "free software" rather than "open source software" because, they state in a paper on Free Software philosophy, the latter term and the associated marketing campaign focuses on the technical issues of software development, avoiding the issue of user freedoms.[11] "Libre" is used to avoid the ambiguity of the word "free" in English language.

[edit] Definition

The first formal definition of free software was published by FSF in February 1986.[12] That definition, written by Richard Stallman, is still maintained today and states that software is free software if people who receive a copy of the software have the following four freedoms[13]:

  • Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
  • Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
  • Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
  • Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code is highly impractical.

Thus, free software means that computer users have the freedom to cooperate with whom they choose, and to control the software they use. To summarize this into a remark distinguishing libre (freedom) software from gratis (zero price) software, Richard Stallman said: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'".[14]

In the late 90s, other groups published their own definitions which describe an almost identical set of software. The most notable are Debian Free Software Guidelines published in 1997,[15] and the Open Source Definition, published in 1998.

The BSD-based operating systems, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, do not have their own formal definitions of free software. Users of these systems generally find the same set of software to be acceptable, but sometimes see copyleft as restrictive. They generally advocate permissive free software licenses, which allow others to make software based on their source code, and then release the modified result as proprietary software. Their view is that this permissive approach is more free. The Kerberos, X.org, and Apache software licenses are substantially similar in intent and implementation. All of these software packages originated in academic institutions interested in wide technology transfer (University of California, MIT, and UIUC).

[edit] Examples of free software

The Free Software Directory maintains a large database of free software packages. Some of the best-known examples include the Linux Kernel, the BSD and GNU/Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent. Other influential examples include the emacs text editor; the GIMP raster drawing and image editor; the X Window System graphical-display system; the OpenOffice.org office suite; and the TeX and LaTeX typesetting systems.

[edit] Free software licenses

All free software licenses must grant people all the freedoms discussed above. However, unless the applications' licenses are compatible, combining programs by mixing source code or directly linking binaries is problematic, because of license technicalities. Programs indirectly connected together may avoid this problem.

The majority of free software uses a small set of licenses. The most popular of these licenses are:

The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their own definitions of free software and open-source software respectively.

The FSF list is not prescriptive: free licensees can exist which the FSF has not heard about, or considered important enough to write about. So it's possible for a license to be free and not in the FSF list. The OSI list only lists licenses that have been submitted, considered and approved. All Open Source licences must meet the Open Source Definition.

Apart from these two organizations, the Debian project is seen by some to provide useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian doesn't publish a list of approved licenses, so its judgments have to be tracked by checking what software they have allowed into their software archives. That is summarized at the Debian web site.[16]

It is rare that a license announced as being in-compliance with the FSF guidelines does not also meet the Open Source Definition, although the reverse is not necessarily true (for example, the Netscape Public License used for early versions of Mozilla and NASA Open Source Agreement are both OSI-approved licenses, but non-free according to FSF)

[edit] Permissive and copyleft licenses

The FSF categorizes licenses in the following ways:

  • Public domain software – the copyright has expired, the work was not copyrighted or the author has released the software onto the public domain. Since public-domain software lacks copyright protection, it may be freely incorporated into any work, whether proprietary or free.
  • Permissive licenses, also called BSD-style because they are applied to much of the software distributed with the BSD operating systems. The author retains copyright solely to disclaim warranty and require proper attribution of modified works, and permits redistribution and any modification, even proprietary ones.
  • Copyleft licenses, the GNU General Public License being the most prominent. The author retains copyright and permits redistribution and modification provided all such redistribution is licensed under the same license. Additions and modifications by others must also be licensed under the same "copyleft" license whenever they are distributed with part of the original licensed product.

[edit] Security and reliability

There is debate over the security of free software in comparison to proprietary software, with a major issue being security through obscurity. A popular quantitative test in computer security is to use relative counting of known unpatched security flaws. Generally, users of this method advise avoiding products which lack fixes for known security flaws, at least until a fix is available.

Free software advocates say that this method is biased by counting more vulnerabilities for the free software, since its source code is accessible and its community is more forthcoming about what problems exist,[17](This is called "Security Through Public Disclosure" by some) and proprietary software can have undisclosed flaws discoverable by or known to malicious users. As users can analyse and trace the source code, many more people with no commercial constraints can inspect the code and find bugs and loopholes than a corporation would find practicable. User access to the source code makes deploying free software with undesirable hidden spyware functionality far more difficult than for proprietary software.[18]

[edit] Commercial viability and adoption

Free software played a part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the infrastructure of dot-com companies.[19][20] Free software allows users to cooperate in enhancing and refining the programs they use; free software is a pure public good rather than a private good. Companies that contribute to free software can increase commercial innovation amidst the void of patent cross licensing lawsuits. (See mpeg2 patent holders.)

Under the free software business model, free software vendors may charge a fee for distribution and offer pay support and software customization services. Proprietary software uses a different business model, where a customer of the proprietary software pays a fee for a license to use the software. This license may grant the customer the ability to configure some or no parts of the software themselves. Often some level of support is included in the purchase of proprietary software, but additional support services (especially for enterprise applications) are usually available for an additional fee. Some proprietary software vendors will also customize software for a fee.[21]

Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in permanently lower costs compared to proprietary software. With free software, businesses can fit software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves or by hiring programmers to modify it for them. Free software often has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign legal liability to anyone. However, warranties are permitted between any two parties upon the condition of the software and its usage. Such an agreement is made separately from the free software license.

A report by Standish Group says that adoption of open source has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year.[22]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Binary blobs

In 2006, OpenBSD started the first campaign against the use of binary blobs, in kernels. Blobs are usually freely distributable device drivers for hardware from vendors that do not reveal driver source code to users or developers. This restricts the users' freedom to effectively modify the software and distribute modified versions. Also, since the blobs are undocumented and may have bugs, they pose a security risk to any operating system whose kernel includes them. The proclaimed aim of the campaign against blobs is to collect hardware documentation that allows developers to write free software drivers for that hardware, ultimately enabling all free operating systems to become or remain blob-free.

The issue of binary blobs in the Linux kernel and other device drivers motivated some developers in Ireland to launch gNewSense, a GNU/Linux distribution with all the binary blobs removed. The project received support from the Free Software Foundation.[23]

[edit] BitKeeper

Larry McVoy invited high-profile free software projects to use his proprietary versioning system, BitKeeper, free of charge, in order to attract paying users. In 2002, Linux coordinator Linus Torvalds decided to use BitKeeper to develop the Linux kernel, a free software project, claiming no free software alternative met his needs. This controversial decision drew criticism from several sources, including the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman.[24]

Following the apparent reverse engineering of BitKeeper's protocols, McVoy withdrew permission for gratis use by free software projects, leading the Linux kernel community to develop a free software replacement called Git.

[edit] Patent deals

In November 2006, the Microsoft and Novell software corporations announced a controversial partnership involving, among other things, patent protection for some customers of Novell under certain conditions.[25]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "GNU project Initial Announcement". http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html.
  2. ^ "Software Freedom Law Center". http://www.softwarefreedom.org.
  3. ^ Dixon, Rod (2004). Open Source Software Law. Artech House. p. 4. ISBN 9781580537193. http://books.google.com/books?id=9b_vVPf53xcC&pg=PA4&dq=%22free+software%22+freeware#PPA4,M1. Retrieved 2009-03-16. "On the other hand, freeware does not require any payment from the licensee or end-user, but it is not precisely free software, despite the fact that to an end-user the software is acquired in what appears to be an identical manner. Freeware is provided to end-users at no cost, but free software provides more benefits than simply delivering a no-cost product--indeed, for the end-user, there may be circumstances where the monetary cost of acquiring free software exceeds the cost of freeware."
  4. ^ Graham, Lawrence D. (1999). Legal battles that shaped the computer industry. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 175. ISBN 9781567201789. http://books.google.com/books?id=c6IS3RnN6qAC&pg=PA175&dq=%22Legal+battles+that+shaped+the+computer+industry%22+%22from+the+beginning+of+the+computer+age%22. Retrieved 2009-03-16. "Freeware, however, is generally only free in terms of price; the author typically retains all other rights, including the rights to copy, distribute, and make derivative works from the software."
  5. ^ Fisher, Franklin M.; McKie, James W.; Mancke, Richard B. (1983). IBM and the U.S. Data Processing Industry: An Economic History. Praeger. ISBN 0-03-063059-2.
  6. ^ "IBM launches biggest Linux lineup ever". IBM. 1999-03-02. Archived from the original on 1999-11-10. http://web.archive.org/web/19991110114228/http://www.ibm.com/news/1999/03/02.phtml.
  7. ^ Farrah Hamid (2006-05-24). "IBM invests in Brazil Linux Tech Center". LWN.net. http://lwn.net/Articles/185602/.
  8. ^ "Interview: The Eclipse code donation". IBM. 2001-11-01. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-erick.html.
  9. ^ "Sun begins releasing Java under the GPL". Free Software Foundation. November 15, 2006. http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-welcomes-gpl-java.html. Retrieved 2007-09-23. "FSF president and founder Richard Stallman said, 'I think Sun has contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. It shows leadership. It's an example I hope others will follow.'"
  10. ^ Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (November 20 2006). "Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU" (PDF). European Union. pp. 51. http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/ict/files/2006-11-20-flossimpact_en.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
  11. ^ "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software". http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html. "The philosophy of open source, with its purely practical values, impedes understanding of the deeper ideas of free software; it brings many people into our community, but does not teach them to defend it."
  12. ^ "GNU's Bulletin, Volume 1 Number 1, page 8". http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt.
  13. ^ FSF: The four freedoms
  14. ^ Free Software Foundation. "The Free Software Definition". http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
  15. ^ Bruce Perens. "Debian's "Social Contract" with the Free Software Community". debian-announce mailing list. http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-1997/msg00017.html.
  16. ^ "Debian -- License information". http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
  17. ^ "Firefox more secure than MSIE after all". News.com. http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6047727-7.html.
  18. ^ "Transcript where Stallman explains about spyware". http://fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html#freedom-one.
  19. ^ Netcraft. "Web Server Usage Survey". http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html.
  20. ^ The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache Strategy in the New Economy". http://www.unc.edu/~mohrmana/apache.pdf.
  21. ^ Andy Dornan. "The Five Open Source Business Models". http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/01/the_five_open_s.html.
  22. ^ http://standishgroup.com/newsroom/open_source.php
  23. ^ GNU/Linux distributions we know of which consist entirely of free software, and whose main distribution sites distribute only free software.
  24. ^ "Richard Stallman thanking Larry McVoy for ending the gratis licenses for BitKeeper". NewsForge. http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/04/25/130207.
  25. ^ "Ars Technica article on the Microsoft-Novell patent deal". http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/linux/linux-20070128.ars.

[edit] External links