EU research funding + free software

[Karsten Gerloff]

Hi Nikos,

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 06:36:06PM +0200, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Karsten Gerloff <gerloff at fsfeurope.org> wrote:
> 
> > Right. Getting funding to Free Software projects is important; but
> > surprisingly often, EU projects aren't an effective or efficient
> > way of doing it.
> > That said, it seems that our work with the Commission over the
> > past years has borne some fruit. We had been pushing the EC to
> > address exactly the problem you're highlighting, and make it
> > easier for Free Software developers to participate without a legal
> > entity.
> > I discussed this again with an EC project officer, and he told me
> > that in Horizon 2020, natural persons can participate. I haven't
> > had a chance to review the documentation yet -- feel free to beat
> > me to it :-)
> 
> Well, at least from my experience with FP7 the typical submission was
> from a consortium of companies and universities, I wasn't aware of any
> single company/university projects.

Participating as an individual wasn't an option in FP7. 

I've looked around the EC's Horizon 2020 pages for a bit. The
first thing I've found is this:

	http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/docs/h2020-funding-guide/grants/applying-for-funding/find-partners_en.htm

according to which the best options for individuals working on
their own are 

  - European Research Council (ERC) research grants – support
    frontier research by individual researchers and teams.

  - Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions – support researcher mobility.
    Besides research funding, scientists have the possibility to
    gain experience abroad and in the private sector, and to
    complete their training with competences useful for their
    careers.

The Curie grants did exist in FP7, too. Also, I haven't yet seen
what the EC says about individuals participating as part of a
consortium.

Interestingly, the EC apparently also plans to use prizes as an
incentive mechanism, though no details seem to be currently
available.



Best regards,
Karsten
-- 
Karsten Gerloff                      [ ]   <gerloff at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe   [ ][ ][ ]      [http://fsfe.org]
President                            | |         +49 176 9690 4298
Support software freedom!                [http://fsfe.org/support]

Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. is a German Verein registered
at the Registergericht Hamburg (VR 17030). 


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20140630/875c79da/attachment.sig>