<section id="preface-overview">

    <title>Overview</title>

    <para>

        On April 2009, I decided to stop working for cuban State. This

        decision emerged with the increasing feeling of repression

        experimented when one, as system administrator, isn't agree

        with the restrictions impossed by cuban State and tries to

        find an alternative way to express oneself differently. In

        this environment, one can realize that the cuban political

        system lacks of such independent alternatives for cubans to

        use.  I don't pretend to use this book to detail the political

        system I live on, but I do want to say that the more I got

        involved with the cuban political system the more distance I

        felt between the most pure of myself and the actions the

        system expected from me to do as system administrator.

        Nevertheless, it is motivating to see how we are able to

        realize about such things thank to bright minds like Richard

        Stallman with his philosophy about freedom and an immense free

        software community under constant development which provides

        the medium to express the free software philosophy as a way of

        living.

    </para>

    <para>

        In these last years (2009-2011), the cuban State has shown

        signs to start using free software distributions with the idea

        of <quote>reaching a technology independency</quote> which is

        quiet contradictory to me. What independency we are talking

        about here?  Independency for whom, and from whom? The only

        way I see the cuban State will be able to reach such

        independency (as long as I understand its political system)

        would be creating and maintaining an entire technical

        infrastructure (e.g., computers, network devices, operating

        systems written from scratch, etc.) inside its political

        boundaries without any intervention from the outside.

        Otherwise, the cuban State would be inevitably attached to

        someone that can differ from it and, that would be something

        unacceptable for cuban State, because it would compromise the

        former idea it has about independency.

    </para>

    <para>

        The cuban State is misunderstanding or trying to distort the

        real meaning of free software and the philosophy behind it.

        The free software is built by people and dedicated to people

        whom might be in need of it, with the hope of being useful and

        garantee the freedom of computer users paying a monetary price

        or not for it.  The cuban State, on the other hand, introduces

        free software at convenience because there are entire

        operating systems free of charge one can study and change as

        needed, not in the sense of the freedom it provides to people.

        The cuban State uses free software as another impositions to

        control what software does people use and which one

        doesn't.<footnote>

        <para>

            When I was working in the health sector of cuban State, my

            superior told me once that I couldn't keep using &TC;; on

            servers any longer, because system administrators at

            central level stopped using Red Hat related distribution

            and started to use Debian. I don't want to enter in a

            debate why one or another distribution, that's not the

            point. But I do want to mentione that this decision

            couldn't be taken from one day to another without any

            consideration about all the time people spent studying

            (and working for) one specific GNU/Linux distribution. My

            opinion was rejected and they kept themselves showing me

            that it was a politics to follow, no matter what I thought

            about it. I couldn't accept that and fired up myself. I

            cannot change from one operating system to another just

            because someone wants to.

        </para>

        </footnote> Some people might see that it is free

        software anyway, but think that again: Shouldn't you have the

        freedom to decide what free software to use, and also what

        community you join to? No one must impose you anything about

        which social community you participate in, that is a decision

        you need to take yourself, not someone else.  Sadly for cuban

        people, the medium where such free software communities live

        in (i.e., Internet) is only available for institutions related

        to cuban State, making it very difficult for cubans without

        any political relation with the cuban State to make decitions

        like that and integrate any free software community at all. I

        strongly beleive that for the free software philosophy to

        touch the heart of cubans, the free software communities must

        be accessable to all cubans.  However, while the cuban State

        keeps itself being inbetween, controlling how the cubans can

        or cannot integrate any specific way of living, there will not

        be free software in Cuba, nor any freedom for cubans to make

        use of.

    </para>

    <para>

        Another popular affair frequently mentioned by the cuban State

        information media is the migration from privative to free

        software.  The migration from privative software to free

        software must be initiated from people deepest comprehension

        of what they are doing, not from impositions of another

        inquestionable order everybody need to comply with.  So,

        cubans need to feel what freedom is and express it in order to

        perceive a deep impact of free software in cuban society.  We

        cannot pretend that cubans use free software based on a lie or

        a distorted idea of the freedom it provides, that idea won't

        last much before it falls itself into pieces.  People need a

        way of identifying themselves apart from any social or

        political system in order for them to be able of decide

        whether or not to be part of one.

    </para>

    <para>

        It is impossible to truly defend freedom if one doesn't have

        felt what it is. The cuban State never talks (at least on its

        information media) of introducing free software for freeing

        the cuban society of privative software. In fact, if you

        compare the privative software and the way cuban State

        restricts information,<footnote>

        <para>

            See resolution 129 emitted by the cuban Ministerium of

            Informatics and Telecommunications (MIT).

        </para>

        </footnote> you may find them very similar.  The resolutions

        emitted by cuban State are specific to statal instituions when

        using computers to share information.  I don't know of any

        legal estipulation about using information and communication

        technologies by nautural people outside the statal sector and

        spite of it, I've heard of people that has been called by the

        cuban State security departament to explain why they built a

        computer network in the neighbourhood to share information

        (isn't that obvious) and finally they were intimidated to stop

        doing so.  There isn't a legal instrument in either direction

        that one can use as pattern to act legally. The cuban State

        has all the legal power to condemn you as cuban, but you are

        completly naked against it.

    </para>

    <para>

        Internet access is another obscured issue inside Cuba.  Around

        2008, Cuba and Venezuela signed up an agreement to connect

        each nation with a trasatlantic fiber optic cable for high

        speed Internet access. In 2011 the cuban State announced the

        cable had been touched the cuban territory, but nothing more

        has been mentioned so far.  There is a terrible silence about

        it. Some people are woundering why to spend so much money on

        that if no cuban can use it, others prefer to think that the

        entire project failed. It is difficult to know what happend

        exactly because, again, there is no alternative way of

        communication but those provided and controlled by the cuban

        State.  The fact is that there isn't a way for cubans to

        contract an Internet service at home, nor a viable way to

        acquire a fixed telephone line at home either.  However, the

        same isn't true for extrangers coming from other countries to

        visit Cuba or stay inhere as residents. The cuban State

        permits these persons to pay the Internet service, in offices

        called Telepuntos or for accessing it at home using different

        fees.  Some cubans cannot understand this, nor the logic

        behind it either.

    </para>

    <para>

        In Cuba there is only one telecommunication organization named

        ETECSA. This organization is very tied to cuban State and

        controls everything related to telephone networks and

        dedicated links for data transmistion in the island.<footnote>

        <para>

            I heard of a case where someone tried to establish an

            independent connection from Cuba to another country using

            the air as phisical medium for data trasmission and that

            person is pressently suffering years in cuban prisons for

            doing that.  The cuban State considered such action as a

            risk for national security. At this moment I have no more

            information about this case.  It is very difficult to be

            accurate about such things without an alternative

            information medium, apart from those under cuban State

            control.

        </para>

        </footnote>Based on the fact that the telephone network is the

        only communication medium most cubans have direct access to,

        our attention is centered on it, as phisical medium to

        exchange data using computers.  It is important to remark

        that, when using the telephone network as medium for data

        transmission, there are limitations in the number of

        simultaneous connections it is possible to phisically

        establish between computers, it could be difficult to obtain

        the required communication devices inside the island, and it

        could be too much expencive to make international calls in

        order to exchange information with public services available

        on different networks outside Cuba's political boundaries.

        Besides all these restrictions, the telephone network has a

        national scope that can be efficiently used by computers to

        transfer data all over the island at a cost of national

        telephone calls.

    </para>

    <para>

        I beleive that most of problems the cubans presently have are

        caused by a lack of information we need to face in order to

        understand what we are and where we are going to, in the sense

        of an interdependent human being's society.  To face the

        information problem, it is needed to make available

        independent ways for cubans to express themselves in freedom

        and provide, this way, the routes needed to work out the

        problems we face today. That's my goal with this work:

        educating myself in the compromise of providing an independent

        space for cubans to discuss and coordinate how to create

        collaborative networks using the cuban telephone

        network<footnote>

        <para>

            Considering that I and most cubans haven't Internet access

            at present time.

        </para>

        </footnote> as phisical medium to transmit information using

        computers in freedom. 

    </para>

    <para>

        The motivation for this work was taken from the free software

        philosophy exposed by Richard Stallman in his book

        <citetitle>Free Sofware Free Society</citetitle> and my

        personal experience from 2003 to 2009 as active member inside

        &TC;; international community.

    </para>

</section>