<section id="preface-overview">

    <title>Overview</title>

    <para>

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

        the increasing feeling of repression I experimented as

        system administrator when I didn't agree with the restrictions

        impossed by cuban State and tries to find an alternative way

        to express myself 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 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

        idea it had about independency in first place.

    </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 from 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 or not a

        monetary price for it.  The cuban State, on the other hand,

        introduces free software at convenience because there are

        entire operating systems free of charge which the cuban State

        can study and change as needed, not in the sense of the

        freedom it provides to people, but as a way to control what

        software does people use and the way they do that.  It is

        another impositions people should comply with, no matter what

        they think about it.<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 mention that this decision

            shouldn'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 matter of politics one should follow, no

            matter what one thought about it. I couldn't accept that

            and fired up myself from that institution. I cannot change

            from one operating system to another just because someone

            wants to.

        </para>

        </footnote> Some people might think that there is no problem

        in that because it is free software anyway. Yes, that's true,

        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.  The free software isn't free

        because of its name, but the legal, social, economical and

        political environment it is used in. If licenses used by

        software producers (either free or privative) to release their

        work isn't protected in that environment somehow, software

        producers won't be motivated to create any software at all

        (either free or privative).

    </para>

    <para>

        Consider what happening in Cuba with Windows, the operating

        system produced by Microsoft corporation: when one install the

        Windows operating system, one of the first screens in the

        installation process is the License agreement under which

        Microsoft releases its product. This agreement is based on the

        copyright concept, the same legal instrument the Free Software

        Foundation relys on to distribute free software. The fact the

        License agreement of of Windows operating system isn't

        complied (e.g., no cuban pays Microsoft for using its

        operating system) as Microsoft expect it be, is a sign of a

        clear violention of international copyright concept.

        Personally, I don't use Windows operating system since 2003

        when I discovered the free software philosophy,<footnote>

        <para>

            I want to thank my teacher Jesús Aneiros Sosa for

            intructing me in the free software philosophy and for

            leading the LUG of Cienfuegos during so many years to

            transmit the feeling of freedom.

        </para></footnote> but I am worried about the legal issues

        cuban might face when developing free software. For example,

        will the cuban State treat the free software license in the

        same way it treats private software licenses? If the cuban

        State has no legal regulation to protect the international

        copyright concept (i.e., letting authors to publish their

        works the way they want to and provide the legal protections

        needed to deprive people from using those creations in a way

        different from that one conceived by their authors), it would

        be very difficult to truly motivate people to create free

        software (or anything else) in Cuba.

    </para>

    <para>

        The main problem here is based on different ideas about the

        same concept. The free software movement was initiated by

        Richard Stallman in the United States of America, based on the

        legal system of that country.  In order to use free software,

        in the sense of freedom thought by Richard Stallman, it is

        required that a similar underlaying legal system in matters of

        copyright concepts be present in Cuba, or an agreement among

        all countries (e.g., The Berna Treatment) in this matter.

        Otherwise, I don't see a way for cuban people to understand

        what free software really is, nor the philosophy behind it.

    </para>

    <para>

        Free software communities are the place where free software is

        produced. There are international, national and local

        communities grouped under free software philosophy. In Cuba,

        because all the communication media are controlled by the

        cuban State and conceived to its own benefit, it is difficult

        for anyone differing from cuban State to have access to

        communication media where the free software communities live

        in.  I strongly beleive that for the free software philosophy

        to touch the heart of cubans, all free software communities

        must be accessable to 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 frequent topic 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's deepest comprehension

        of what they are doing, not from impositions of another

        inquestionable order everybody needs 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 will use free software based on a

        lie or a distorted idea about the freedom it provides, an idea

        like that wont 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) about introducing free software for freeing

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

        compare the privative software and the way cuban State

        restricts the information management,<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 that

        use 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 unarmed against it.

    </para>

    <para>

        Internet access is another obscured issue inside Cuba.  Around

        2008, Cuba and Venezuela signed up an agreement to connect

        both nation with a trasatlantic fiber optic cable for high

        speed Internet access. In 2011 the cuban State announced the

        arrival of such cable to cuban national territory, but nothing

        more has been mentioned since then.  There is a terrible

        silence about it that make people woundering themselves what

        happend with that invertion. Some people ask why to spend so

        much money on that if cubans cannot make use of it and others

        prefer to think that the entire project failed. It is

        difficult to know what happend exactly because, again, there

        isn't any alternative way of communication but those provided

        and controlled by the cuban State.  The fact is that, at

        present time (2011), there isn't a legal way for cubans to

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

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

        same isn't true for extrangers coming from other countries

        whose are visiting Cuba or staying inhere as residents. The

        cuban State permits these persons to access Internet paying a

        service in offices called Telepuntos or from home using

        different fees.  Some cubans cannot understand this, nor the

        logic behind it either.

    </para>

    <para>

        In Cuba there is only one telecommunication corporation named

        ETECSA. This organization gives the impresion of being very

        tied to cuban State and controlling 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 a cuban prison

            because the cuban State considered such action as illegal.

            At this moment I haven't 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 cuban telephone network is

        the only communication medium most cubans have direct access

        to, my attention is centered on it as phisical medium for

        exchanging information 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 Modem 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 cuban telephone network has a national

        scope that can be efficiently used by cuban

        people inside the island to share information using computers

        at a monetary cost of national telephone calls and the

        electrical power consumed by computers and communication

        devices.

    </para>

    <para>

        To protect the information traveling through the telephone

        line, people can make use of the

        <application>GnuPGP</application> application to encrypt data

        traveling or the <application>Openssl</application>

        cryptography toolkit to encrypt the entire data transmission,

        both available inside &TC;;.

    </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 access to

            dedicated links or real IP addresses for data transmission

            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>