The Guardian 28 February, 2007
Cuba, Venezuela vs. Microsoft
Cuba and Venezuela have announced they will shake off yet another yoke of US hegemony — the Microsoft Windows computer operating system.
Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.
"It’s basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology", said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.
Other countries have tried similar moves. China, Brazil and Norway have encouraged the development of Linux for a variety of reasons: Microsoft’s near-monopoly over operating systems, the high cost of proprietary software and security problems.
Cuban officials, ever focused on US threats, also see it as a matter of national security.
Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes raised suspicions about Microsoft’s cooperation with US military and intelligence agencies.
He called the world’s information systems a "battlefield" where Cuba is fighting against imperialism. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once described copyright reformers, including people who want to do away with proprietary software, as "some new modern-day sort of communists" — a badge of honour from the Cuban perspective.
Cuba imports many computers preloaded with Windows and also purchases software in third countries such as China, Mexico or Panama.
Richard Stallman is a computer scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Free Software Foundation created the license used by many open-source programs, including Linux.
He pointed out that copyright laws violate basic morality; he compared them to laws that would threaten people with jail for sharing or modifying kitchen recipes.
Stallman also warned that proprietary software is a security threat because without being able to examine the code, users can’t know what it’s doing or what "backdoor" holes developers might have left open for future entry. "A private program is never trustworthy", he said.
Cuba’s Cabinet also has urged a shift from proprietary software. The customs service has gone to Linux and the ministries of culture, higher education and communications are planning to do so, Rodriguez said. Students in his own department are cooking up a version of Linux called Nova.
Rodriguez’s department accounts for 1,000 of the 10,000 students within the University of Information Sciences, a five-year-old school that tries to combine software development with education.
Cuba is also training tens of thousands of other software and hardware engineers across the country, though few have computers at home. Most Cubans have to depend on the slow links at government internet cafes or schools.
Rodriguez shied away from saying how long it would take for Cuba to get most of its systems on Linux: "It would be tough for me to say that we would migrate half the public administration in three years."
But he said Linux use was growing rapidly.
"Two years ago, the Cuban free-software community did not number more than 600 people ... In the last two years, that number has gone well beyond 3,000 users of free software and it’s a figure that is growing exponentially."