Produção de software livre por uma empresa estatal de tecnologia da informação: um estudo de caso sob a perspectiva da tecnologia social

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand how the process of building a free software, selected from documentary research, was realized by users and developers of Serviço Federal de Processamento de Dados – Serpro, a information technology – IT – state-owned enterprise, between 2003 and 2018, respectively the beginning of the Serpro Program of Free Software, and the year of conclusion of this work. Through an exploratory qualitative research with case study, this work intends to fill a gap found in the studies of science, technology and society referring to research that relates free software and state-owned enterprise with social technology, under the assumptions that free software communities share the fundamental principles of self-management and collective ownership of means of production with enterprises of solidarity economy and that there are similar features in the concepts of free software and social technology. Free software is software that can be freely executed, studied, changed and shared. Solidarity economy is a proposal of alternative to the capitalist mode of production and the social technology is a cognitive platform for the constitution of solidarity economy enterprises. These concepts are presented in more detail and aligned in the context of the State, where state-owned enterprises are inserted. Based on the confrontation between various documentary sources, such as the company's corporate site, TEMA magazine, the Brazilian Public Software Portal and the Citizen Information Service Electronic System, and semi-structured interviews with Serpro employees who participated the use and development of the selected software, it was possible to understand, from the perspective of social technology, as a state-owned IT company, faced with a duality of economic interests that produce ambiguous actions, managed to produce a certain free software and what the adherence of this artifact to the concept of social technology, in the sense of producing social inclusion. Througout the research it was possible to measure the effective production of free software by Serpro in the studied period.