Castro's last stand? Cuba ditches Microsoft and goes open source

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 20 February 2007 14:30

Business IT - Technology

Could it be Castro’s last strike against capitalism? Cuba has decided to throw off the shackles of proprietary software to join Venezuela in embracing open source software – but much like Fidel’s ongoing recovery, going open source won’t be an overnight process.

Open source advocates must be breaking out the Cuban cigars in celebration as the Associated Press reports that Cuba has decided to open source is the way to go to eliminate dependency on proprietary software – like that from Microsoft and other vendors.

As a communist nation, the appeal of open source software is obvious, as it frees them to modify free, already existing and advanced software to suit their needs, and gives them the ability to ensure no backdoors exist as they can examine the code and change it to their heart’s content – something that use of most commercial software precludes.

That said, you don’t need to be communist or socialist to appreciate open source, despite China creating their own version of Linux, and Venezuela’s embrace of open source software. Open source software was invented by people in the capitalist ‘West’ for a start, whatever their personal political persuasions, and businesses like IBM make billions from supporting Linux – one of the major standard bearers for the open source movement. 

While there’s no specific date by which Cuba’s government and educational institutions will solely be running Linux and open source programs, the Customs Service is already using Linux, with three government ministries planning a transition. Cuba’s university has a department with 1000 students developing open source software and their own version of Linux, called Nova, based on the Gentoo Distribution.

The department is run by Hector Rodriguez who AP quotes as saying that “It's basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology” but he also said that "It would be tough for me to say that we would migrate half the public administration [to Linux] in three years."

That’s probably because if a system ain’t broke, it isn’t necessarily worth immediately fixing – and if it is to be replaced, the two systems need to be running in parallel before just switch off the old system and turning on the new – especially if you’re going from one operating system and software set to another – whether it’s open source or not.

While it’s a big job for an individual, it’s obviously a much larger task for government departments who have to provide services to the population – even if they’re communist.

While most Cubans with computers are said to be running a version of Windows, often XP, indicating a strong Microsoft presence as is likely the case everywhere in the world, no matter what the political persuasion of the government or their level of open source conversion, the size of the Cuban Linux community is reported to be 3000 people – up from 600 two years ago – with no readily accessible figure for Cuban Windows users to compare to.

The growing worldwide popularity of open source is undeniably increasing, and its quality improving to rival and even better commercial software in different areas. If it threatens Microsoft too much, Microsoft’s next version of Windows, codenamed Vienna, just might be on time, on budget and deliver an easy-to-use and powerful operating system that truly takes Windows to the next level – instead of an operating system that is very good, but could have been so very much better, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

So, long may open source live – we need it to keep Microsoft and others in line, and provide a viable alternative. But if you thought Cuba had gone totally open source, you wouldn’t be close and there’d definitely be no cigar – at least, not for a few years yet.