<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

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

        with the restrictions impossed by the State and try to find an

        alternative way to express differently. In this situation one

        can 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 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. However, it is motivating to see how people could 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) would be

        creating and maintaining an entire 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 is something unacceptable for the cuban State

        because would compromise the former idea it initially had

        about its independency.

    </para>

    <para>

        The cuban State is misunderstanding or confusing the real

        meaning of free software. The free software is made by people

        and dedicated to anyone whom might be in need of it, with the

        hope of being useful and garantee the freedom of computer

        users. The cuban State introduces free software because it is

        free in the sense of price, not in the sense of freedom. The

        cuban State uses free software as another impositions to

        control what software does people use and which one don't.

        Some people might see that it is free software anyway, but

        think again: Shouldn't you have the oportunity 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.

        Sadly, 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 cuban people 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 to reach cuban

        people, free software communities must be accessable for cuban

        people first, so the cuban talent can be added to free

        software philosophy. However, till the cuban State be

        controlling inbetween how the cuban people can or cannot

        integrate an specific way of living to its own, there will be

        no free software in Cuba, nor any freedom for the cuban people

        to make use of.

    </para>

    <para>

        It is impossible to defend freedom if one doesn't feel what it

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

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

        Informatics and Telecomunications (MIT), you may find them

        very similar. There is an obsession by controlling all the

        information media on the country and they cannot be used to

        purposes others than those defined by the State. For example,

        to reach Internet access, cuban people need to be working for

        the cuban State somehow and that way comply with the politics

        impossed by it about information management which is strict,

        at the point of denying service based on restrictions.  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

        with friends is trying to <quote>resolve</quote> a fixed

        telephone line at home to gain access to the cuban telephone

        network and then use it to transmit data using computers. The

        telephone network is the communication medium 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

            almost no one 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>