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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

EU funding is the kiss of death for technology initiatives. I can confidently predict that this will go nowhere.

Why? Do they mandate process or procedure policies that kill productive organizations, or what? I'm genuinely curious.

I've been part of some large consortia. Generally, there is a ton of paperwork. Lots of project partners focus on filling in this paperwork to pretend they are doing something and pocket grant money. But, usually, nothing good is delivered, aside from some expensive DOCX. With that said, things are changing a bit and becoming a bit more efficient and dynamic.

That was the case for big EU funded projects with lots of industrial + accademia participants. I worked at a place where we had people working full time on setting up proposals for these projects. This was a very political game (find partners in countries the EU wants to help this year!), and very low risk too for big partners. We were usually "selling" stuff that had been done already, and the new funding was used to work on new stuff. That meant we could always show successful projects, which in turn helped getting new funding - rinse and repeat.

NGI is different, they seem to focus more on funding individuals and open source projects with relatively small grants. This has good and bad sides of course - a more level playing field, but makes it still difficult for projects that require long term work.

NLNet is an NGO and has been funding a lot of cool stuff.

Yeah, public grants in the EU never work very well. However, some of the consortia members have already delivered good software.

Personally, I think someone should have bought Jolla and open-sourced Sailfish and their Android VM. Perhaps turn it into a foundation, like Signal.

>consortia

Wait, there is more than one?

Yes, NGI is funding several similar efforts.

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