<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 doesn'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, while the cuban State be

        inbetween controlling how the cuban people can or cannot

        integrate a specific way of living, there will not be free

        software in Cuba, nor any freedom for the cuban people to make

        use of.

    </para>

    <para>

        Another popular affair frequently mentioned by the cuban State

        information media is related to 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,

        people 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 people will use a free software distribution

        based on a lie or a distorted idea of freedom, that idea won't

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

        way of identifying themselves apart from any social/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 defend freedom if one doesn't have felt

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

        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

        operates the information media, based on the resolution 149

        emitted by the Ministerium 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 cuban State. For example, to reach Internet

        access, cuban people need to work for the cuban State somehow

        and that way complying with whatever politics they impose

        about information management.  There is no a legal way for

        cuban people to contract an Internet service at home, even the

        cuban churches in the island have limitations in this area

        (unbelievable).  The most I see 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 one can phisically perform

        between computers, the way of obtaining the required

        communication devices,<footnote>

        <para>

            Communication devices like modems, switches and routers

            are available to institutions related to cuban State only.

        </para>

        </footnote> and the way information is exchanged with public

        services available on different networks like Internet.

    </para>

</section>