<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
I experimented when one, as system administrator, isn't agree
with the restrictions impossed by the State and try to find an
alternative way to express differently. In this situation one
can realize that the cuban political system lacks of such
independent alternatives for anyone 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. However, it is motivating to see how people could realize
about such things thank to bright minds like Mr. 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 way of
living.
</para>
<para>
In these last years, the cuban State has shown signs to start
using free software distributions with the goal 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 for the cuban State to reach the independency it looks for
(as long as I understand its political system) would be
creating and maintaining an entire 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 is something unacceptable for the cuban State
because would compromise the former idea it initially had
about its independency.
</para>
<para>
The cuban State is misunderstanding or confusing the real
meaning of free software. The free software is made by people
and dedicated to anyone whom might be in need of it, with the
hope of being useful and garantee the freedom of computer
users. The cuban State introduces free software because it is
free in the sense of price, not in the sense of freedom. The
cuban State uses free software as another impositions to
control what software does people use and which one don't.
Some people might see that it is free software anyway, but
think again: Shouldn't you have the oportunity 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.
Sadly, 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 cuban people 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 to reach cuban
people, free software communities must be accessable for cuban
people first, so the cuban talent can be added to free
software philosophy. However, till the cuban State be
controlling inbetween how the cuban people can or cannot
integrate an specific way of living to its own, there will be
no free software in Cuba, nor any freedom for the cuban people
to make use of.
</para>
<para>
It is impossible to defend freedom if one doesn't feel what it
is. The cuban State never talks (at least on the public 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 operates the information
media, based on the resolution 149 emitted by the Minister of
Informatics and Telecomunications (MIT), you may find them
very similar. There is an obsession by controlling all the
information media on the country and they cannot be used to
purposes others than those defined by the State. For example,
to reach Internet access, cuban people need to be working for
the cuban State somehow and that way comply with the politics
impossed by it about information management which is strict,
at the point of denying service based on restrictions. There
is no a legal way for cuban people to contract an Internet
service at home. The most one can do in Cuba to share data
with friends is trying to <quote>resolve</quote> a fixed
telephone line at home to gain access to the cuban telephone
network and then use it to transmit data using computers. The
telephone network is the communication medium most people have
access to, however, there are limitations in the number of
simultaneous connections that can be performed and finding the
Modem devices required.<footnote>
<para>
Modem devices aren't available on stores. In fact, the few
computation hardware available on stores has prices that
almost no one can pay for (making this another limitation
for average poeple).
</para>
</footnote>
</para>
<para>
The migration from privative software to free software must be
from people comprehension of what they are doing, not from the
impossition of another inquestionable order to comply with.
So, people need to feel what freedom is and express it in
order to perceive a deep impact in the society. Don't pretend
people will use a free software distribution based on a lie,
that idea won't last much before it fall into pieces. People
need a way of identify themselves apart from any political
system in order for them to decide whether or not to be part
of one.
</para>
<para>
It is also fare to mention that freedom has a cost and more if
you are living in a political system where most people cannot
make use of it to manifest themselves. I didn't find any
solution other than isolate myself from that political system
repressing my natural freedom of expression. For example,
When I closed my contract, it was very difficult to find a job
as system administrator and had to relay on my family which,
in its majority, grew up with the political system I reject
and is attached somehow to it. A terrible humilation to me,
but less humilation than a direct relation since it wasn't my
decision to come into the world nor be educated in a way I
wasn't able to take concience of. This way, I gave my first
step back into the reconstruction of myself.
</para>
<para>
The reconstruction of oneself is a painful process where care
should be taken against craziness and high blood pressures. It
is a time of loneliness and waiting one need to face
inevitably at some point of life. In that time you compress
yourself until you are able of seeing what you are, what you
are not, what you are doing, why are you doing it, and what
purpose does everything has for others once your life reaches
its end in this word. How strong you are to take the
responsability of your own existence and fight against anyone
trying to take that from you. In this process, one separates
its body from its mind and makes it to act based on a major
idea of what one has faith in. Your life, and all it brings to
you, is so yours that it is very important that everyone be
aware of that, specially in political systems that insist on
living your life for you.
</para>
<para>
After two years in this situation, Frank Sueiras (the housband
of my ant Carmen L. Delgado) retires himself from working to
cuban State and started doing jobs for third parties. In one
of those jobs, the Jesuitas church contracts him to
planificate everything related to hydraulics on a building
under construction. I went with him there and the air of
community remembered me that one experimented inside &TCP;. I
saw an opportunity therein and ask him to talk there in order
for me to work on whatever it be needed (e.g., putting glasses
on doors, helping the welder man, painting, etc.).<footnote>
<para>
They didn't need a system administrator by then ;-).
</para>
</footnote> This way I received a payment for living (which
was almost 4 times more than what I was receiving as system
administrator when worked for the cuban State). At nights I
keep myself reading the documentation available inside &TCD;
and writing about &TCAR; with the hope of found an Internet
access to share what I've been doing.
</para>
<para>
&TCAR; development has been the excel I've been attached to
through all this time. It has been the sence of my days, the
central place I've used to reconstruct myself and I use this
book to describe what you can do to help me develop &TCAR; in
an environment where the only independent way of transfer data
is the telephone network, motivated by the need of sharing
still in this very limited conditions.
</para>
</section>