Just came back from Paris, where I’ve spent the last tow days. We were invited to present Polarsys to the Chess, an Artemis funded research project.
I came across quite a few of these projects lately, some of them funded by the EU, some of them funded by Artemis, ITEA or some other agency that I knew or didn’t know. And all of them seem to do some sort of the same thing. At least that what it looks like to me. When I ask, they try to explain to me what makes them so different.
Anyway, many of them seem to spend considerable time on stuff that others have already build or are in the process of building. Some platform components here, some persistency frameworks there. And neither I nor they know if they can use the other project’s results, because they just don’t see them.
If I’m right with my assessment, then we look at a huge waste of taxpayer’s money here. How could this be stopped? Really simple: The funding agencies just need to tell them that they need to develop in open source. Creates visibility as well as accountability. Or is that a problem?