Well, under various parts of Horizon 2020 there are grants available for a lot of different projects. Looks like they've been awarded the funds under the SME i

Well, under various parts of Horizon 2020 there are grants available for a lot of different projects. Looks like they've been awarded the funds under the SME instrument phase 2, which is about providing grant funding for a variety of innovative business ideas, and generally intended to help existing businesses bring new products to market. You can see the exact details of the Proton project here: https://sme.easme-web.eu/?b=911075023 https://sme.easme-web.eu/?b=911075023 The point is, there's nothing specifically wrong about offering grants to companies who develop closed-source software, in the same way there's nothing wrong with offering grants to other companies who don't produce software at all. My company—building a hardware project—has also just been awarded funding under the same programme (I can reassure you that they did indeed research throughly!). Much of the business case for grant investments is the idea that offering funding to SMEs can be an overall economic benefit if it allows them to produce products or services that they wouldn't otherwise be able to offer. Given the rather more cautious private funding environment in Europe, it can be hard to otherwise come by some of these opportunities. That's not to say that funding for open-source projects isn't a great thing, and I hope more of that continues to be made. The grants you refer to were made as part of FOSSA I think? It's done with different intent, but I reckon both are valuable.