Cuba’s communist government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire — Microsoft Corp. — by joining with socialist Venezuela in converting its computers to open-source software. Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft’s proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code. Other countries have tried similar moves. China, Brazil and Norway have encouraged the development of Linux for a variety of reasons: Microsoft’s near-monopoly over operating systems, the high cost of proprietary software and security problems.

Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, an old comrade-in-arms of President Fidel Castro, raised suspicions about Microsoft’s cooperation with U.S. military and intelligence agencies as he opened a technology conference this week. He called the world’s information systems a “battlefield” where Cuba is fighting against imperialism. Valdes is a hard-liner who favors uniforms and military haircuts, but the biggest splash at the conference was made by Richard Stallman, whose Free Software Foundation created the license used by many open-source programs, including Linux. Richard Stallman said that copyright laws violate basic morality; he compared them to laws that would threaten people with jail for sharing or modifying kitchen recipes.