<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
experimented when one, as system administrator, isn't agree
with the restrictions impossed by cuban State and tries to
find an alternative way to express oneself 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 distributions 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
former idea it has about independency.
</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 by 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 a monetary price
or not for it. The cuban State, on the other hand, introduces
free software at convenience because there are entire
operating systems free of charge one can study and change as
needed, not in the sense of the freedom it provides to people.
The cuban State uses free software as another impositions to
control what software does people use and which one
doesn't.<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 mentione that this decision
couldn'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 politics to follow, no matter what I thought
about it. I couldn't accept that and fired up myself. I
cannot change from one operating system to another just
because someone wants to.
</para>
</footnote> Some people might see that it is free
software anyway, 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. Sadly for cuban
people, 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 cubans 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 philosophy to
touch the heart of cubans, the free software communities must
be accessable to all 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 popular affair frequently 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 deepest comprehension
of what they are doing, not from impositions of another
inquestionable order everybody need 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 use free software based on a lie or
a distorted idea of the freedom it provides, that idea won't
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) 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
restricts information,<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 when
using 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 naked against it.
</para>
<para>
Internet access is another obscured issue inside Cuba. Around
2008, Cuba and Venezuela signed up an agreement to connect
each nation with a trasatlantic fiber optic cable for high
speed Internet access. In 2011 the cuban State announced the
cable had been touched the cuban territory, but nothing more
has been mentioned so far. There is a terrible silence about
it. Some people are woundering why to spend so much money on
that if no cuban can use it, others prefer to think that the
entire project failed. It is difficult to know what happend
exactly because, again, there is no alternative way of
communication but those provided and controlled by the cuban
State. The fact is that there isn't a way for cubans to
contract an Internet service at home, nor a viable way to
acquire a fixed telephone line at home either. However, the
same isn't true for extrangers coming from other countries to
visit Cuba or stay inhere as residents. The cuban State
permits these persons to pay the Internet service, in offices
called Telepuntos or for accessing it at home using different
fees. Some cubans cannot understand this, nor the logic
behind it either.
</para>
<para>
In Cuba there is only one telecommunication organization named
ETECSA. This organization is very tied to cuban State and
controls 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 cuban prisons for
doing that. The cuban State considered such action as a
risk for national security. At this moment I have no 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 the telephone network is the
only communication medium most cubans have direct access to,
our attention is centered on it, as phisical medium to
exchange data 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 required communication 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 telephone network has a
national scope that can be efficiently used by computers to
transfer data all over the island at a cost of national
telephone calls.
</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 Internet access
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>