Free software pioneer Richard Stallman on his experience in Cuba

In February of last year, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, spoke at the International Conference on Communication and Technologies in Havana about what he strongly believes are the merits of non-proprietary software. I recently learned directly from Stallman what that experience was like.

I interviewed Stallman at length on July 31 outside his MIT office, and I'll post the interview on our site in the near future. Here's an excerpt in which Stallman talked about his time in Cuba.

DT: What did you take away from your experience in Cuba?

RMS: A lot of things. I spent most of my time in an enclave where mostly foreign visitors come. I only had a couple brief experiences being in other places and seeing what any other part of Cuba was like. I wasn't there for very long. They would have been happy if I had stayed longer, but you know what my schedule's like. And if I'd stayed longer, I might have seen other parts of the island, too. Nonetheless, I did get to see the poverty. The buildings there are in a terrible state of disrepair, as well as lots of cars.

I also met a person who impressed me tremendously -- Oswaldo Paya, who is a champion of human rights who is famous and happens to be related to some friends of mine, also, so I got in touch with him.

DT: This person is working underground, I would assume.

RMS: He's not underground, no. The authorities know who he is because he's never tried to hide what he was doing. He looked at the Cuban constitution, and he saw that if 10,000 people sign a referendum, there's supposed to be an election, and they can amend the constitution through a referendum. Well, he got more than 10,000 people to sign, and a lot of them have been punished. And the referendum has never happened. He says that he wants to preserve the social gains of the revolution, but have human rights.

DT: I've editorialized that U.S. companies should be allowed to compete in Cuba. What's your position on that?

RMS: I really don't care. From my point of view, business issues are minor in comparison with issues of human rights and general well-being. And I reject completely the assumption that the way to improve people's well-being is always through a market. A market is a tool, and for some things it's very good. It can work well in some areas of life, as long as somebody is making sure it doesn't go haywire. One of the things we see when businesses have too much power is that they corrupt those watchdogs, and we see this in the U.S. all the time. The U.S. government has ceased to effectively monitor the market to make sure it works well. Instead, it is a tool in the hands of big business. So instead of capitalism of a useful kind, we now have extreme capitalism, which is thoroughly corrupt. And the results of that are increasingly bad, here and everywhere else.

So I really don't care that much whether U.S. companies can compete in Cuba. On the other hand, looking at it from a different direction, I don't think the U.S. embargo against Cuba is a good thing. Certainly I don't think people should be stopped from going to Cuba, or sending money to Cuba, or spending money in Cuba. Whether that means U.S. businesses can compete there, I don't care that much. It probably would, I suppose.

What I really care about for Cuba is I want Cubans to have human rights and democracy, and I hope they will refuse to become part of the empire of the mega-corporations. Because if they do, they'll once again lose their human rights and democracy, just as we in the U.S. have lost our democracy.

In Cuba, people don't see any problem with using Microsoft Windows, because Microsoft can't sue anybody there. There are four freedoms that define free software. These four freedoms are: Freedom 0, the freedom to run the program as you wish; Freedom 1, the freedom to study the source code and change it so the program does what you wish; Freedom 2, the freedom to help your neighbor, which is the freedom to make and distribute exact copies of the program when you wish, and that includes the freedom to give away copies and the freedom to sell copies, whichever you wish; and Freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community, which is the freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified versions when you wish.

DT: Why Freedoms 0-3 rather than Freedoms 1-4?

RMS: Because originally I had 1, 2, and 3, and then I realized that the freedom to run the program did not go without saying, and had to be explicitly mentioned. And because it was so basic, I felt it had to go at the beginning.

In any case, with Windows in Cuba, people do have Freedoms 0 and 2, because the license has no validity, and Microsoft can't stop anybody from redistributing copies. That doesn't make it effectively free software, because they don't have Freedoms 1 and 3. They don't have the source code. In particular, that means they can't check if for malicious features, back doors, which we have every reason to suspect are in there. And therefore they really shouldn't be using it, but they're not aware of this, mostly. Except for the government ministers - they had become aware by [the time of the conference] that there is something bad about using Windows in Cuba, or other proprietary software. But mostly things are going on with the same inertia as everywhere else.

When I got there, they told me, proudly, about their computer youth clubs, which teach youngsters how to use computers. Of course, they were teaching them to use Windows. So I said, "Cuba has an important resource - lots of people who have never learned to use Windows. And here you are, destroying that resource, gratuitously. If you are not ready yet to switch these clubs so that they teach people free software, at least you should shut them down until they can."

DT: And their response?

RMS: Well, they were probably a bit surprised, because they never thought about these things in these terms. But now I'm in touch with somebody who has converted one youth club to use free software, and he's now talking with the people who run the other youth clubs in his region, trying to convert them. So something's finally getting done.

I gave a speech at the University of Havana, as well as at the Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas - it's a university just for IT. And in that university they have something like 10 faculties, and one of them is the Faculty of Free Software. It was the dean who invited me on that trip. So I said in a meeting with him and the rector, "Your job should not exist. There should not be a Faculty of Free Software, because that presupposes that all of the rest of the faculties are not free software. And really the whole university should only teach free software." Of course, he got the irony. He understood this was not a personal criticism. The point is, at least there they were somewhat receptive to the idea.

But when I spoke at the University of Havana, the students liked it, but the teachers thought this was ridiculous, and they had absolutely no interest in budging. They thought, "We have no trouble getting and installing Windows." They weren't thinking deeply, or far enough ahead.