<section id="preface-overview">
<title>Overview</title>
<para>
Since 1999, I've been working for cuban State as Webmaster and
lately as system administrator. On April 2009, I decided to
stop working for cuban State due the increasing feeling of
repression I experimented with the restrictions impossed by
cuban State in the information area when I tried to find an
alternative way to express myself different from what such
restrictions impossed. This environment made me find 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, and what could be an alternative way for cubans
inside the island that, like me, feel the same need of
independent expression.
</para>
<para>
Everything in the human life is directly related to
information. Our actions are based on the information we have.
The information is the base of education and evolution. It is
the only way we can know how to do the right thing for us and
others. I beleive that, in order to provide a good education,
the universal information must be accessable to everyone in a
transparent way, based on facts and without any manipulation
(i.e., in way others can reproduce or verify what the
information refers to). That kind of information is good
information to based our lives on. However, there are also bad
information that we need to differentiate from good
information using our own conscience, not that one from
others. I like the idea of structuring my life over pragmatic
fatcs that I can verify together with a deep faith on what I
am that help me to persist along the duty. The pragmatic fatcs
provides the steps of the stair of my life and the faith, the
force my body needs to climb up the stair.
</para>
<para>
The years I worked for cuban State coincided with those years
I began to realized myself about the steps of my stair and the
faith on my movements. Lot of contradictions have been
appearing in front of me since then, but a magical thing
inside me (conscience) always tell me not to abandon the must
pure of my self and keep going with this travel I'm still
walking on; even when moving up one step in the stair feels
like rasping the skin of my body against a rough wall. I know
it will heal, but it hurts when happens. The only way to
support the pain is to have faith on the rightness of your
actions. That's the price of don't loosing oneself when
walking over pragmatic facts in a confussed and unarmed
society. That's the price of showing out that truth is inside
us, not outside us. It is the way of showing the truth is in
the one's faith, no matter what it be, but in feeling it
somehow, specially when it comes from understanding what we
are and the immense gift it is to have conscience of our
univeral existence as part of that unknown nature we, as
living humans, cannot ever have conscience of.
</para>
<para>
I've experimented faith in free software and the philosophy
behind it by mean of &TCP;, but no possible way to manifest it
independently from cuban State. The cuban State controls all
the communication media and very few possibilities are
available for cubans to build up independent collaborative
networks using computers inside the island for sharing
information apart from cuban State restrictions and
conditions. One of these possibilities is the telepohne
network the cuban State provides, which has national scope.
Generally, cubans use the telephone network to talk among
themselves, but it is also possible to use this network to
transmit information that cannot be communicated using the
regular method of human talking. It is possible to attach
computers to the telephone network the cuban State provides to
transmit whatever information a computer can produce (e.g.,
images, documents, programs, etc.) from one location in the
island to another and encrypting the information traveling
along the wire to garantee its privacy (e.g., the source
computer protects the information in a way that only the
target computer is able to unprotect. If the information is
intercepted by a computer located in the transmission middle,
it would be useless for that computer since only the target
can use it once it has been unprotected). We'll see more about
this later.
</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 technological independency</quote> which is
quiet contradictory to me. What independency we are talking
about here? Independency for whom, and from whom? Based on
the meaning of the word, independency is the lack of any
dependency, so the only way I see the cuban State will be able
to reach such technological independency would be creating and
maintaining an entire technological infrastructure (e.g.,
computers, communication devices, operating systems written
from scratch, etc.) inside its political boundaries without
any intervention from the outside world. Otherwise, the cuban
State would be inevitably dependent from someone else that can
differ at some point of the production string and that would
be something unacceptable, because it would compromise the
idea the cuban State had about independency in first place
(i.e., no dependency).
</para>
<para>
If the vision described above about what the cuban State tries
to mean by <quote>reaching a technological
independency</quote> sounds appropriate to you, 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 who
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
guaranteeing the freedom it provides to people, but as a way
to control what software does cubans use and the way they do
that. It is another impositions cubans should comply with, no
matter what they think about it.<footnote>
<para>
When I was working in the health sector of cuban State
(2003-2007), 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 else 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 by yourself, not from someone else.
</para>
<para>
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 to release their
works (either freely or privatively) aren't protected somehow
in that environment, software producers wont be motivated to
create any software at all (either free or privative).
Consider what is happening in Cuba with Windows, the operating
system produced by Microsoft corporation: when someone install
the Windows operating system, one of the first screens in the
installation process is the License Agreement under which
Microsoft corporation releases its product. This agreement
relys on the copyright concept, a legal instrument that was
initially created to motivate authors to create more.
Likewise, the Free Software Foundation relys on the copyright
concept to distribute free software. The fact the License
Agreement of Windows operating system isn't complied in Cuba
(e.g., no cuban pays Microsoft corporation for using its
operating system) as Microsoft imposses in its License
Agreement, is a clear sign of international copyright
violation, no matter if Cuba can or cannot establish
commercial treatments with Microsoft corporation because of
the Embargo impossed by United States of America against Cuba.
It is an ethical matter cubans need to comply with in order to
help reducing the tension against both nations by showing
respect for their creators and the way they expect their
products to be distributed world-wide. 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 Linux User Group (LUG) of Cienfuegos during so
many years and transmiting the feeling of freedom.
</para>
</footnote> but I am worried about the legal issues cubans
might face when developing free software. For example, will
the cuban State treat the free software license in the same
way it treats privative 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. The main problem here is that you can
write free software, but what instrument you have to protect
it from others to make your code privative and forbbid you,
this way, from using further improvements over the code you
wrote yourself.
</para>
<para>
It is important to remember that the free software movement
was initiated by Richard Stallman in the United States of
America, based on the legal system of that country,
specifically in the copyright concept being in force. 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 be complied among all countries (e.g.,
The Berna Treatment) for this matters. I've heard that Cuba
signed The Berna Treatment, however what is happening with
Windows operating system gives the impression that cuban State
is not complying with the agreement it signed on there. For
cuban society to understand what free software and the
philosophy behind it really are, it is required to force a
strong concept of copyright in the cuban legislation, even
when some authors might want to deny the cuban State from
using the work they produce or use it under conditions the
cuban State doesn't agree with. It is required to give that
legal power to cuban authors, the people who create. I wonder
if the cuban State is ready for that; and if not, why? I
really would like to know in order to find a solution.
</para>
<para>
Free software communities are the place where free software is
produced. There are international, national and local
communities grouped under the 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 software 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
officially) 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 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 cubans 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. If the cuban State really wants
to be democratic, it needs to give to cubans the arms they
need to fight against it without fear of being defeated.
Indeed, there would be no defeating at all, but evolution into
new political states based on cubans needs. It is the majority
of cubans who should define how The Cuban Tree evolves, not a
few minority that opresses the unarmed masses.
</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 what happend with
that millionary invertion. Some people ask themselves 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.<footnote>
<para>
I know of people that have requested a fixed telephone
line for their home and more than three years have passed
and they haven't the line yet. It is also known by
everyone that others don't even have to make any request
to have a fixed telephone line at home.
</para></footnote> However, the same isn't true for extrangers
coming from other countries who 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. Have cubans
to change their nationality in order to have Internt access
from their homes in Cuba?
</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
actions. 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 cubans 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 (e.g., modems and
switches).
</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 base arguments needed to edificate
the solutions of those 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>