I recently returned from a trip to Cuba, where I went to study the adoption
and use of free and open source software. Since there has been an embargo
on trade between the US and Cuba for more than 50 years, I expected Cuba
to be an excellent case study for the widespread use of open source software
in education, government,and business.
But that turned out not to be the case at all.
I recently returned from a trip to Cuba, where I went to study the adoption
and use of free and open source software. Since there has been an embargo
on trade between the US and Cuba for more than 50 years, I expected Cuba
to be an excellent case study for the widespread use of open source software
in education, government,and business.
But that turned out not to be the case at all. When I went to use the computers
at ETECSA, the Cuban telecom monopoly, I discovered that all of the machines
were old Dell desktops (Optiplex generation) running Windows and Internet
Explorer, with the home page set to Google Cuba. Of course, these machines
didn't come directly from the US, so Dell and Microsoft have not done anything
wrong here. In today's global economy, products can easily be sourced around
the world and shipped as needed. Cuba uses DHL (owned by Deutsche Telekom) for
all of its international shipping, allowing shipments to and from anywhere other
than the US. Cuba's sugar-based economy brings in a lot of hard currency and
allows them to spend money on energy, technology, developing their tourist
industry, and more.
It wasn't just the computers at ETECSA, though. Among the American items that
I saw, without making any formal effort to look, were Coca-Cola (from Mexico),
Gerber's baby food (from the Dominican Republic), Pringles (apparently from
Israel), Hunt's tomato sauce, Orbit and Eclipse gum, M&M's (plain and peanut),
and several kinds of whiskey. These items were only available to people with
convertible currency, but the same was true for many other items in the Cuban
dual economy. In short, though, the worldwide presence of many large American
consumer product companies means that the Cuban government can buy any American
product that they want, just not directly from the US. There's no need for Nikes,
for example, since the wealthy Cuban 1% can easily buy the competing Adidas (German) or Asics (Japanese) products. The clerk in my hotel, not a rich person, has an iPhone.
Beyond these products, I also discovered that many of the computer applications used
in businesses are running on Windows. Again, it's a matter of sourcing. Just as
many US businesses contract for software development work to be done in Asia or
Eastern Europe, so do the Cubans. They order turnkey systems, so the buyer receives
machines running Windows with the applications already installed. The machines
themselves may or may not have an American brand name on the box.
So the Cuban embargo, a long obsolete artifact of the Cold War, is now a complete
failure, kept alive for historic or political reasons, but serving no real purpose.
Indeed, as I will discuss in Part II, the embargo is not only useless, but also
detrimental to the best economic and political interests of the US. It's time for
it to go. More tomorrow.