Hi everybody
I will share with some experiences about activities that are taking place
nowadays in Cuba and also related with the Debian Project
Who am I? I am Jonathan Bustillos Osornio (Jathan) also
I am a Debian contributor and a Debian user since 2008 and I have been helping
on some teams like po-debconf templates, translations in the Debian Spanish
Translation Team since 2011 and on Debian Reproducible Builds in 2017
In Cuba there is a community of Free Software users and developers who have been working
on different activities and useful developments to extend the use of Debian
and other Free Software projects throughout the country
The first group that we have is the GUTL The Free Tecnologies Users Group, in
Spanish - Grupo de Usuarios de Tecnologias Libres, is an organisation in Cuba since
the development of the GNU/Linux users communities of the whole country.
It pushes the usage of free technologies organizing events, workshops, courses and
many more activities of social impact with Free Software.
Some of this events are like the Free Document Day related with Libreoffice
And this are the pictures of the events, also the FLISol the Latin American
Festival Free Software Instalation
Also recreation activities
GUTL has a website in each they publish many articles or news related with Debian
and another Free Software projects.
The GUTL was born in 2009 and since then it has been one of the most influencial
organisations in Cuba to learn, use and share Free Software, hardware and knowledge
The main work objectives of this organisation are technological sovereignty
Social Comptroller, socialization of Information, Project development
International visibility for Cuba in the field for free software and free
Technologies.
Now we will know about free software projects and it's achievements
The GUTL group has created a repository called REPOGUTL which is an implementation
of something called the Cuban Sourceforge, by their developers and users
where free software developers have the opportunity to publicize their creations
and get feedback, promoting the migration and use of Free Software to Cuban users.
This is the system which you could find in the website
the repository generated with Cuban free software called Alfidi is structured in two
major categories, these are applications and products, with subcategories under them
and they include the title of the application, the author, contacts if it is desired by the
creator, size, a brief description and a long description in addition to the
instructions for installation.
These are the main developers of REPOGUTL and maintainers, Maikel Enrique Pernia Matos
And Delio Orozco González.
Also we have a free software project called MISOX
Misox is of set of Free Software applications developed by Maikel Pernía
Matos , Delio Orozco González and Alberto Miguel Nuevo Rojo in the
province of Manzanillo Granma in Cuba, under the GNU GPL license and also
packaged as .deb for our debian distribution with the purpose of helping computer users
to create a customization of Debian GNU/Linux adjusting it to their necessities
since an easy and well integrated environment.
These are some screenshots of the program, it's main purpose is to facilitate some
computer users customization of debian GNU/Linux operating system and to put
the packages the users want, to set the graphical interface like Gnome, Kde [???]
like Fluxbox, Awesome, I3
And also it offers the possibility to add individual debian packages from an
external source.
There is another project called VideoMorph which is a is a GUI wrapper for ffmpeg,
based on code from python-video-converter and presets idea from QWinFF and FF Multi
Converter, developed by Ozkar L. Garcell, Leodanis Pozo Ramos and Leonel Salazar
Videaux in Holguín, Cuba.
And this is the screenshot.
The mais goal of VideoMorph is to focus is a single purpose making video conversion
simple with an easy to use GUI and allowing the user to convert to the currently most
popular video formats.
These are the colleagues that are working on the group of GUTL in Holguín.
And they also organize activities to talk about some free software community
or present some program to their users. And they have also created a website
called Debian GNU/Linux in Holguín, that is Debian Hlg, and in this website
they publish news related to Debian, events that are organized in this part
of the far east of Cuba in Holguín, and it's a very nice way to stay in contact
with the local users.
Some achievements of the GUTL is [???] is one of the most actives communities
in Cuba, because they are a lot of members, and they have the support of the university
of Holguín, for some activities. We have also an official member of the
document foundation, Carlos Parra Zaldivar and he's working with libreoffice community
directly.
Also there are four free software active developers,
there are two programs in development,
and two active repositories in GitHub.
Beside this it would have three websites with international visibility like Debian
in Holguín, and Python Scouts and Libreoffice cubava
Sometimes the Holguín free software community has a space to talk about free
technologies at a TV program of Cuba called "A Buen Tiempo", there is something like
[???] time.
By the other hand we have a lot of activity in Granma province, that is also in the East
of Cuba
This is the place in which more Free Software projects have been developed
in island, also REPOGUTL was hosted here, until some months ago, because now the
organization was supporting the group it is not [???] anymore, to give the hosting
because of institutional restrictions.
Many programs in development, also there are one GUTL website editor,
and there is a free software active developer.
In Santiago de Cuba also we have a GUTL website editor, and they have created
a blog called SWL-X, that is a a web blog related to free software activities
and there is a free software active developer
So now i will talk about some events that has been taking place during the last two
years, this is the CubaConf and these the Free Technologies Cuban Conference
CubaConf, is an international conference about Free Software and open technologies that have
taken place in Havana, Cuba since 2016. CubaConf is a meeting from the international
community of enthusiasts of many parts of the world besides the Cuban local communities,
peer to peer focused and collective development. It seeks the participation of people
with different profiles and diverse geographical locations.
[???] CubaConf that was on 2016, we have here the last that was in November of last
year and we had the opportunity to have some Debian developers, for instance in
2016 Tiago Bortolleto and Tassia Camões went to CubaConf and they pushed to
create with Leonel Salazar a Cuban free software developer to organize
for the first time the mini-debconf in Cuba.
From the organization of the conference it is aimed at the diversity of topics and
projects, as of its participants, so the participation of women, minority groups
in these activities is crucial to build new inclusive spaces of knowledge and dialogue
about technology. The main idea is to know people experience and organizations who
work with and in Free Software, with old hardware technologies and little or slow
bandwidth, to talk about how Free Software can help developing countries.
During the last CubaConf we had a great number of girls participating with talks
and even attending the event and that was very motivating, we also had a talk with Molly
de Blanc of the Free Software Foundation and she did a very nice presentation
And this is the global photo from last year
Now I will talk about the mini debconf, CubaConf 2016 these encounter between
Tassia, Tiago and Leonel, has pushed to organize for the first time the mini debconf
in Cuba.This college is Leonel Salazar Videaux and he's one of the founders of UTL and
DebianHlg in Holguín, he's a free software user since 2004