donate@home: DA is blackballing the project

[zombie67]

I posted this here, but I thought I would let you all know what is going on.

No stats updated at the moment.

Yes they are. You can see them for yourself here:

http://donateathome.org/stats/

The problem is that DA is actively encouraging stats sites to not carry this project (black ball), and some of the stat sites are going along with it. This is a bad and *wrong* decision, IMO. Stats sites should publish the data, full stop. Stats sites should be completely neutral, and not in the business of making value judgements on projects. That belongs exclusively to the individual crunchers. This sets a very bad precedent. Again, all IMO.

[Bok]

I'm sure you read my post back to the mailing list..

[Fire$torm]

Oh lardy..... Reminds me of "As The Stomach Turns" - the Carl Burnett parody of day time soap operas. Hilarious stuff there. Guess I'm showing my age......

[zombie67]

Oh lardy..... Reminds me of "As The Stomach Turns" - the Carl Burnett parody of day time soap operas. Hilarious stuff there. Guess I'm showing my age......

Tug your earlobe!

[zombie67]

I'm sure you read my post back to the mailing list..

Yep. Looks like you and I are pretty much on the same page here.

[Fire$torm]

I have a question. Does it state anywhere in BOINC's Terms of Use that only pure science projects are acceptable? Aqua@Home wasn't a pure science project. Also I do not recall A@H sharing any hard data with the public. And we all know there are other BOINC projects currently running with the ultimate goal of turning a profit.

BTW: Thank you Z for the heads up. I have been on the dev mailing lists for awhile now but haven't made the effort to keep up. Time to change that.

[spingadus]

Hmm, I must have missed this, I don't see any discussion about this in the boinc_dev or boinc_projects mailing lists.

[Bok]

It's the boinc_stats mailing list.

[spingadus]

Ah, k thanks, i'm not on that one.

[zombie67]

No, there is no "pure science" clause...as if that could be defined anyway. Which brings me back to why stats sites need to be neutral. Let the user decide.

FWIW, there have been for-profit projects in the past (e.g. Artificial Intelligence), that have used BOINC. Completely legal. donate@home, also for-profit, is used for funding research. But that is an FYI. Makes no difference in the ability to use BOINC.

IMO, this is just DA trying, actually proclaiming, that he is the dictator on what BOINC stats gets published.

Bok: Taking a completely neutral stance here - A meaningless computation to one person might be fairly interesting to another, where would we draw the line and who would do that ?

DA: I would, and the line is: if the results of a computation are discarded, it's meaningless. Meaningless projects should be excluded from stats sites.

Remember, this BOINC development is funded by us, the US taxpayer....