> I'm seeing more quality research from Fraunhofer in recent years that is also useful for practical purposes.
This is their intended mission. Only about 30% of Fraunhofer is financed through public funding, the remaining 70% or so have to be earned through doing contract work for the industry. This has a number of goals:
1. It makes advanced R&D accessible for small and medium enterprises that cannot afford their own R&D department.
2. It is a fairly effective way for the government to subsidize private R&D. It's effective, because businesses still have to pay the majority of the cost, so they aren't going to waste money.
3. Less research is hidden behind corporate walls, but can be more easily shared and reused, as Fraunhofer retains intellectual property to some of it (or even straight-out opens it up, such as GPI-2/GASPI [1]).
This is their intended mission. Only about 30% of Fraunhofer is financed through public funding, the remaining 70% or so have to be earned through doing contract work for the industry. This has a number of goals:
1. It makes advanced R&D accessible for small and medium enterprises that cannot afford their own R&D department.
2. It is a fairly effective way for the government to subsidize private R&D. It's effective, because businesses still have to pay the majority of the cost, so they aren't going to waste money.
3. Less research is hidden behind corporate walls, but can be more easily shared and reused, as Fraunhofer retains intellectual property to some of it (or even straight-out opens it up, such as GPI-2/GASPI [1]).
[1] http://www.gpi-site.com/gpi2/ http://www.gaspi.de/ https://github.com/cc-hpc-itwm/GPI-2