<section id="preface-overview">

    <title>Overview</title>

    <para>

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

        decision emerged itself on me from an increasing feeling of

        repression against system administrators by cuban State which

        might be acceptable when one chooses to agree with the

        limitations and play the game. When you don't agree with them

        and try to find an alternative way to express yourself

        differently, you'll realize that the cuban political system

        lacks of such independent alternatives for anyone 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 involve with

        the cuban political system the more distance I feel between

        the most pure of myself and the actions the system expect from

        me to do. However, it is motivating how oneself can realize

        about such things thank to bright minds like Mr. 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

        way of living.

    </para>

    <para>

        In these last years, the cuban State has shown signs to start

        using free software distributions with the goal 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 for the cuban State to reach the independency it looks

        for (as long as I understand its political system) is creating

        and maintaining an entire infrastructure (e.g., computers,

        network devices, operating systems, etc.,) of its own without

        any intervention from the outside. Otherwise, the cuban State

        will be inevitably attached to someone that may differ from it

        and that is something unacceptable because may compromise the

        former idea. If you think this is what cuban State needs, I

        have to say that it is one of the most nonsense idea one can

        ever think of, specially when you consider the the way

        international communities of free software and hardware

        providers interact one another in the modern world. 

    </para>

    <para>

        The free software emerged from people who know what freedom

        is. It is impossible to defend freedom if one don't feel what

        it is. The cuban State never talks (at least on the public

        media) of introducing free software for freeing the society of

        privative software. In fact, if you compare the privative

        software and the way cuban State operates the information

        area, based on the resolution 149 emitted by the Minister of

        Informatics and Telecomunications (MIT), you may find them

        very similar. There is a very strict control over all the

        information media on the country and they cannot be used to

        other purposes different to those defined by the State. For

        example, to reach Internet access, cuban people need to be

        working for the State somehow and that way comply with the

        politics impossed by it about information management. There is

        no a legal way for cuban people to contract an Internet

        service at home. The most one can do in Cuba to share data is

        trying to <quote>resolve</quote> a fixed telephone line at

        home to gain access to the telephone network and then use it

        to transmit data using computers. The telephone network most

        people have access to, however, there are limitations in the

        number of simultaneous connections that can be performed and

        finding the Modem devices required.<footnote>

        <para>

            Modem devices aren't available on stores. In fact, the few

            computation hardware available on stores has prices that

            very few people can pay for (making this another

            limitation for average poeple).

        </para>

        </footnote>

    </para>

    <para>

        The migration from privative software to free software must be

        from people comprehension of what they are doing, not from the

        impossition of another inquestionable order to comply with.

        So, people need to feel what freedom is and express it in

        order to perceive a deep impact in the society. Don't pretend

        people will use a free software distribution based on a lie,

        that idea won't last much before it fall into pieces. People

        need a way of identify themselves apart from any political

        system in order for them to decide whether or not to be part

        of one.

    </para>

    <para>

        It is also fare to mention that freedom has a cost and more if

        you are living in a political system where most people cannot

        make use of it to manifest themselves. I didn't find any

        solution other than isolate myself from that political system

        repressing my natural freedom of expression. For example,

        When I closed my contract, it was very difficult to find a job

        as system administrator and had to relay on my family which,

        in its majority, grew up with the political system I reject

        and is attached somehow to it. A terrible humilation to me,

        but less humilation than a direct relation since it wasn't my

        decision to come into the world nor be educated in a way I

        wasn't able to take concience of.  This way, I gave my first

        step back into the reconstruction of myself. 

    </para>

    <para>

        The reconstruction of oneself is a painful process where care

        should be taken against craziness and high blood pressures. It

        is a time of loneliness and waiting one need to face

        inevitably at some point of life. In that time you compress

        yourself until you are able of seeing what you are, what you

        are not, what you are doing, why are you doing it, and what

        purpose does everything has for others once your life reaches

        its end in this word. How strong you are to take the

        responsability of your own existence and fight against anyone

        trying to take that from you. In this process, one separates

        its body from its mind and makes it to act based on a major

        idea of what one has faith in. Your life, and all it brings to

        you, is so yours that it is very important that everyone be

        aware of that, specially in political systems that insist on

        living your life for you.

    </para>

    <para>

        After two years in this situation, Frank Sueiras (the housband

        of my ant Carmen L. Delgado) retires himself from working to

        cuban State and started doing jobs for third parties. In one

        of those jobs, the Jesuitas church contracts him to

        planificate everything related to hydraulics on a building

        under construction. I went with him there and the air of

        community remembered me that one experimented inside &TC;;. I

        saw an opportunity therein and ask him to talk there in order

        for me to work on whatever it be needed (e.g., putting glasses

        on doors, helping the welder man, painting, etc.).<footnote>

        <para>

            They didn't need a system administrator by then ;-).

        </para>

        </footnote> This way I received a payment for living (which

        was almost 4 times more than what I was receiving as system

        administrator when worked for the cuban State). At nights I

        keep myself reading the documentation available inside &TC;;

        and writing about &TCAR; with the hope of found an Internet

        access to share what I've been doing.

    </para>

    <para>

        &TCAR; development has been the excel I've been attached to

        through all this time. It has been the sence of my days, the

        central place I've used to reconstruct myself and I use this

        book to describe what you can do to help me develop &TCAR; in

        an environment where the only independent way of transfer data

        is the telephone network, motivated by the need of sharing

        still in this very limited conditions.

    </para>

</section>