EU research funding + free software

[Michael Kesper]

Hi Nikos,

Am 26.06.2014 14:58, schrieb Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos:
> On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 10:03 AM, Karsten Gerloff <gerloff at fsfeurope.org> wrote:
>> Hi Nikos,
>> On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:06:50PM +0200, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos wrote:
>>>> In short: An EU project usually isn't an efficient way to finance
>>>> our activities adn achieve our goals.
>>> Hello Karsten,
>>>   Note that my question is not about FSFE participating to EU projects,
>>> on the contrary, I asked whether FSFE would be willing to handle the
>>> paperwork for other european free software projects that are not a legal
>>> entity to participate.
>> We've contemplated that scenario several times. In the end, it
>> always turned out that the project's developers (and everyone
>> else) were better off if they participated through the university
>> or company partners in the project, rather than through FSFE.
>
> Ok, so if I understand you comment, the projects that have no company
> partners or university backing them up, there is no other way. It's
> good to know that funding for free software projects is outside the
> FSFE's goals.

I think you're misinterpreting here.
"Getting money from EU" may sound sexy at first, but to put it simple, 
FSFE does not want to spend its scarce resources on filling out hundreds 
of pages of paperwork.
This does not imply we wouldn't support free software projects with 
reasonable work.

Best wishes
Michael