Blob Blame History Raw
<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.  Nevertheless, it is motivating to see how we
        are able to realize about such things and take actions 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? Based on
        the meaning of the word, independency is the lack of
        dependency, so the only way I see the cuban State will be able
        to reach such independency would be creating and maintaining
        an entire technical 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 correct 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 in that
        environment somehow, 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 Jes&uacute;s 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>
        To protect the information traveling through the wire, you can
        make use of <application>GnuPGP</application> application to
        encrypt data before transmiting it or the
        <application>Openssl</application> cryptography toolkit to
        encrypt the data transmission itself, both applications are
        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 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>