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Hasta el software libre siempre
The Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde reports today that Cuba has developed a new GNU/Linux distribution, “Nova.” Reuters has also picked up the story.
Reuters quotes Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software at the University of Information Sciences, who says that 80% of the computers in Cuba currently run Windows. This comports with my observations when I travelled to and reported from Cuba in 2006.
Obviously there are elements in Cuba who don’t like this. In addition to a Communist régime’s natural affinity for Free Software over proprietary alternatives, the US embargo makes it difficult for Cuban entities to legally procure Microsoft products. It’s probably also bad security policy for the Cuban government, in particular, to rely on closed-source, proprietary software produced in the US.
However, it’s uncertain if this new initiative will be successful. Cuba announced in 2005 an intent to switch to Linux, and apparently not much progress has been made. Richard Stallman, founder and leader of the Free Software Foundation, traveled to Cuba in 2007 and met with some acceptance of his ideas; however, as he notes, Microsoft’s inability to sue Cubans for violating copyright law makes windows costless and thus harder to eliminate.
It’s an interesting situation, and we’ll see what happens.
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