<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 had 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 the cuban State 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. 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 somehow, software
producers won't be motivated to create any software at all
(either free or privative).
</para>
<para>
Consider what's 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 under which Microsoft
releases its product. This License expreses what you can do
and cannot do with this product (e.g., you cannot install it
without paying Microsoft for doing so). In Cuba, I've seen no
protection to make users to comply with such licenses. Anyone
is able to install a Windows system, even in at statal levels.
Now, if the Microsoft license has no protection in Cuba, what
interest does the cuban legal system would have to protect the
free software licenses (e.g., GPL) which give freedom to
computer users?
</para>
<para>
The main problem here, as far as I can see, 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 political 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 political system be present, or at least one that
respects the free software licenses. Otherwise, I don't see a
way for cuban people to understand what free software 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 cuban
State and cuban State uses it to its own benefits, it is
difficult to people whose differ 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, 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 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 of all 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) 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 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 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 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 very few cubans can make use of 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
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 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 a cuban prison for
doing that. The cuban State considered such action as a
risk for national security. 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 the telephone network is
the only communication medium most cubans have direct access
to, my 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 providing, thus, an alternative medium for
data transmision that people can use to communicate themselves
whatever thing they need to.
</para>
<para>
To protect the information passed through the telephone line,
people can make use of the <application>GnuPGP</application>
application or the <application>Openssl</application>
cryptography toolkit, both available in &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 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>