On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Karsten Gerloff <[email protected]> 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. Getting into such a consortium as an individual may well be allowed by the EC now (I haven't checked, although I have no reason to doubt you), but it is not practical. Even if one would use his contacts from the previous projects (e.g. in my case from my previous job as a researcher) they would sympathize but would not allow him to join as an individual in such consortium. They understand as anyone else that it is risky and close to impossible for an individual to handle all the required paperwork correctly, and if he does there would probably not be any time for work. Without contacts already an individual is also doomed, as a big organization and university will speak collaborate with another big organization or university, not with Bob and John to make their project submissions. I understand though that this would require FSFE to become something that is currently not. regards, Nikos _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
