<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 &TCD; 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 &TCD;.
</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
&TCP; international community.
</para>
</section>