News: Richard Stallman convinces Cuba to embrace GNU/Linux

When you hear the name Cuba, it concocts in your mind a picture of bankruptcy, food shortages, drug shortages, rampant unemployment et al, at least some of them a direct side effect of the US trade sanctions [source BBC]. But one thing the Cubans can be proud of is their excellent health care system which rivals even that in the US. Believe it or not, Cubans boasts of a better life expectancy than the North Americans and Cuba has better infant and adult mortality rates than the US.

Being a communist state, it was only natural for Cuba to embrace GNU/Linux as the official OS of choice for all governmental departments. But what surprises me is why it took so long. AP news reports that in a recent visit to Cuba, Richard M Stallman was able to convince the Cuban government the advantages of using a Free OS in all government offices - definitely a big feather in the cap for RMS. He was visiting Cuba to speak at an International Conference on Communication and Technologies in Havana.

It might seem that RMS is only successful with governments which are predominantly socialist in their beliefs. But the fact is, many reasons he lists in favor of supporting Free software are valid and make perfect sense for all the governments the world over irrespective of their ideologies - including (I may add) the US government. The prominent reason being :

The inherent security threat in using proprietary software for mission critical situations or in matters of state security, for the simple reason that without being able to examine the code, users can't know what it's doing or what "back door" holes developers might have left open for future entry.

I feel happy that one more country has decided to embrace GNU/Linux in a big way. Kudos to the Cubans for their foresight.