The communities around free software and their linkage as social movement. The argentinian case

Abstract

The development of the computer industry in recent years has brought with it novelty social conflicts typical of a postindustrial society, configuring a favourable environment for the emergence of new social actors. The objective of the present work is to elaborate an exploratory study about the communities of free software in Argentina today, considering how they are composed on different dimensions (such as cooperativism, research, recreation, commercial exchange, among others); constituting diverse goals and interests, and are developed in multiple geographic areas. The central question of the study is how the coordination, interaction and communication between these associations can manage them as a social movement that introduces the discussion for an alternative model against the dominant model of private appropriation of informatics, basing it on a certain ethical and political conflict vision. For this approach, we will indagate over the actor’s experiences contexts and the intra-organizational arenas that are generated among these groups, also using the concept of multiple positions to understand the different forms of activist’s commitment and the diverse perspectives that circulate inside of them. The information was collected by semi-structured interviews, bibliographic revision, and secondary data analysis.