so let's try to determine what the real issues are in this discussion. is there anyone who has any problems with me or with gridrepublic other than semantics of how credits are displayed?

...matt


____________
"in a world with so much meaningless evil, why not a little meaningless good?"
- my friend mier

Hi matt,
I have a problem with the manner in which your homepage is displayed. It suggests, that you are the entity behind all of what in reality is BOINC.
As long as you didn't come to the public, I could say: It's just a layout test, only fillers, nothing real.
But then you decided to go public, and still nearly no mentioning of BOINC, the claim that all Boincers are "Citizens" of the GD, only a small collection of available projects, and a professional layout that suggests it's meant this way.

Where are the caveats?
Were is the "Sample picture - only for testing" imprint on the bogus stats?

And I consider this not only semantics, but content.

Edit:
It would have been helpfull, if you had a forum on your page yourself, so it could have been asked there first, but you decided against it, so it had to be asked here.

Halifax lad, he did respond with that info earlier today. His post count is 3 but if you click on the "username" and view posts, there are only two posts. It appears one of his were deleted from existence. Perhaps he could repost that info?

I deleted one of Matt's posts because of the language used in it.

I'll repost it without all the swearing:

> Matt, if you're reading this. Don't be offended, but you'd better have used the money
> that you got (just speculating, I'm not sure if I know the details) after your father's death
> for DIRECTLY influencing some project that works on cancer research, and NOT trying to
> steal work from others (hint: no mention of BOINC apart from the small note at the bottom
> of the page; but I'm sure you'll change it) and claim it to be yours.

this is completely out of hand. who the **** is rytis, and what does he know about my father's death? and what kind of ** comment is he trying to make here? and then he says don't take offense? well i do, and mostly becuase, like some others here, he has no clue what he is talking about, certainly not in connection with me, my family, my life, my work, or GR. i know developing an account manager is not easy, and willy and co had to do a lot of work to get theirs going, but if you have questions about the origins of AMS please look here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/acct_mgrs.php (and let me note that this was not a trivial piece of work, it could not be done in the 5 minutes per day hypothesized by rytis and saenger.)

as for another random comment-- which reveals a profoundly disturbing paranoia in an the part of some in this forum, imho-- please note that GridRepublic is a legally registered DBA for the "computational charity project, inc." a non profit corporation registered in the state of new york and with the IRS.

i am frankly at a loss. individually and as a community you probably can bad mouth GR out of existence. and then you have to ask yourself, what for? what was my motivation for doing so? what in the world did i accomplish?

...matt

GridRepublic is a legally registered DBA name for the "Computational Charity Project, Inc." a not-for-profit organization registered in the state of new york and with the IRS.

...matt

____________
"in a world with so much meaningless evil, why not a little meaningless good?"
- my friend mier

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Tony, you are right about these messages. I looked further... There is one more (fourth?) post, the first one I remebmer, probably from another testing account in the BOINC has renamed i think thread. You may remember it too. And the earliest notes I mentioned were in this Rom's note and in Boic checkin_notes_2005 (David 18 Jan 2005 - initial checkin of RPCs for account management systems: see http://boinc.berkeley.edu/acct_mgt.php).

Peter

Don't know much on the IRS I assume its similar to our charities commission over here in the UK

Found it on IRS

---

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As far as i can see it, Rytis knows about your fathers death from you in your former posts (look in the linked threads in Pepos post).
Rytis is the admin of PrimeGrid, and a close ally of Willy on BOINCstats, whenever it's about the development of BAM! or any other programming stuff at BOINCstats. PrimeGrid was (is?) located on Willys server.

To repeat myself:
I have absolutely nothing against any AMS that makes it easier to handle BOINC.
I have absolutely nothing against more and/or better PR of BOINC.
I have absolutely nothing against more and/or better PR for any single project.
But:
I don't like the adorning with borrowed plumes.
I don't like the missing mentioning of the real workhorse BOINC.

I don't like the missing mentioning of the real workhorse BOINC.

Go to site, click on "about", then Proven technology, that's where I see boinc listed

[edit] and then there's About Us where he thanks Dr. Anderson and the Boinc team

I don't like the missing mentioning of the real workhorse BOINC.

Go to site, click on "about", then Proven technology, that's where I see boinc listed

[edit] and then there's About Us where he thanks Dr. Anderson and the Boinc team

I agree, there is some footnote mentioning of BOINC, but that's not what's needed imho. GD is just an AMS, a thin layer above the core BOINC, and thus BOINC has to be featured at a prominent place.

BTW: Rytis is mentioned on the BOINC team list ;)

I don't like Grid Republic's AMS, because it wants me to say which projects I want to contribute in, then allows me to download a BOINC version with all those options set. That is nice for people who never heard of other projects than BOINC before, but....

That BOINC version is always an older one than I am testing.
I don't have a choice of BOINC version(s) I want to download Grid Republic with.

BAM works through the BOINC version I have on my system. When I am Alpha testing new versions, BAM continues to work. With GR I don't have that option.

I am reasonably well at home with BOINC, so I don't mind GR releasing older BOINC versions with all the options set and working. It's just difficult to see how one would want to change one setting on all projects one chose to run through the GR BOINC, without needing to download and install yet another version of GR.

At BAM you change it on one site and then just update (synchronize) through BOINC.

When Matt allows for systems that have BOINC already installed, to change to GR, he could get a lot of us to contribute. If he still only wants us to download another BOINC (like BBC-CPDN), he can wait for my contribution for a long time! :-)

---

there's so much to respond to here, i don't know where to start, so i'll make a quick post now about a simple thing and then prob come back later tonite or tomorrow. as for "forcing users to install the GR client", i think there is some misunderstanding. you can use any boinc client later than v5.4.9: create an account at GR and then cancel the download or delete it, then in your existing client application use tools>attach to account manager and enter our address. the download is offered as a convenience not as a requirement. our primary concern has been new users, and we don't want for them to have to create an account at GR and then go looking for a client: it is designed to be as simple as possible. as mentioned previously, when we update the "join" workflow we will be able to provide instructions specific to each user's situation (new user/existing user, mac/win/linux/solaris). and we will be able to initiate a download only in cases where this is relevant. but for the moment, since we have only one workflow and only one set of instructions, we have those relevant for newbies. the big kids are on their own for the moment.

as for preferences, you can update these at GR (one place) and changes will be applied everywhere. or you can change at any project and the client and GR will reflect your latest set of preferences (allowing for some propagation time)

...matt


____________
"in a world with so much meaningless evil, why not a little meaningless good?"
- my friend mier

---

I don't like Grid Republic's AMS, because it wants me to say which projects I want to contribute in, then allows me to download a BOINC version with all those options set. That is nice for people who never heard of other projects than BOINC before, but....

That BOINC version is always an older one than I am testing.
I don't have a choice of BOINC version(s) I want to download Grid Republic with.

Well, a very quick test-install revealed no problems with using BOINC v5.5.16 and choosing to use Grid Republic as AMS, client-side it seemed to work just like BAM except you're using email instead of username.

Server-side on the other hand there's many differences, and atleast for now BAM is the best choise.

Edit - doh, apparently I'm a really slow typer tonight...

---

"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

... When Matt allows for systems that have BOINC already installed, to change to GR, he could get a lot of us to contribute. If he still only wants us to download another BOINC (like BBC-CPDN), he can wait for ... a long time!...

I too was irritated by the 'customised and different' aspects of the BBC-CPDN promotion. I was already running the standard version of Boinc and had to waste time finding out about what was and wasn't compatible. I've seen a few people suffer much confusion between them, especially with the different directory locations used!...


GR has a nice glossy website, and in its defence has got "GridRepublic is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donate. Powered by BOINC" on the few pages I've looked at (my bold for emphasis). It looks good and inviting for keeping the "single-click" users happy. Loudly detailing "Boinc" would only be confusing. That detail is correctly offered later.

One small detail: Should not "In Memory" be either "In Memory Of" or "In Memoriam"?

The page footer text is far too small to be readable. Making it larger and readable shouldn't detract from the page design.

To allow for more than selecting just nine projects, multiple selection pages of categories are needed. I think page scrolling would be ugly. Or is the emphasis to keep to a restricted selection?

Can the BBC-CPDN-esq customisation pitfalls be avoided? Can the existing standard directory structures be used so that regardless of whether GR, another AMS, or a native install is made, Boinc "just works" in exactly the same way and with the same default directories, simply?


I think the AMS stuff is a good idea provided that they do not spawn multiple incompatible versions of the underlying Boinc or otherwise force any form of 'user lock-in'.

Please keep with the good work!

And note that some posters on these forums are themselves as rough around the edges as some websites.

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Howdy Folks,

Hopefully I can address some concerns.

David and I have been working with the developers of GridRepublic and BAM to provide a way for the client software to be managed. As Matt has pointed out this effort started in late 2004 and has been evolving ever since.

The client software for BOINC/GridRepublic/WCG are all the same piece of software. It is all interchangable. I build the GridRepublic and BOINC client packages.

David and I believe that there needs to be several types of clients aimed at different types of people. It wouldn't surprise me to see at some point in the future team based AMS systems and team themed clients.

Part of realizing that goal is to make a pretty visiable difference in the clients. GridRepublic and WCG will have different themes by default for instance to highlight their brands. Brand is a very inportant thing when your trying to sell something to people. I use the term "sell" to mean convience somebody to install that version over another version of something.

I wonder, did Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Ubuntu, and many other Linux based distros have teething problems when they first rolled out? They are all based on the Linux kernel, but somehow each has maintained a strong brand identity that is both inclusive and different from Linux itself.

I am going to ask the community to be patient while the current issues are being worked on. I don't think anybody working on all this stuff, David and I included, thought of these various issues initially.

Everything is going to continue to evolve.

---

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Thank you for your (even )prompt(er than mine) reply.

This is what the irs.gov site has to say in their charitable org list:

Computational Charity Project Inc. (Until December 2008) Brooklyn NY USA

*** IRS DOES list GR *** Yay!

This goes a long way to repair any credibility problem for me.

There are some things about the website that should take minutes to fix, but that is related to the socalled "alpha problem". Which really comes down to some people making decissions that some of us don't agree with. But agreement isn't a requirement for playing.

Matt is aware of the scheduling demands on Matt, so whether or not some of us agree with the prioritization he makes is our problem. His problem is getting the work done the best he can. Good luck with that. :)

---

as for "forcing users to install the GR client", i think there is some misunderstanding. you can use any boinc client later than v5.4.9: create an account at GR and then cancel the download or delete it, then in your existing client application use tools>attach to account manager and enter our address. the download is offered as a convenience not as a requirement.

I must say, I only did some alpha testing. Yet because I was way ahead in BOINC version at the time and I didn't find an option to just fill in an URL for GR at that time, I never investigated any further. I just made up my mind. :-)

our primary concern has been new users, and we don't want for them to have to create an account at GR and then go looking for a client: it is designed to be as simple as possible.

Kudos to you... yet BOINC changes all the time. Even after 5.4.9 there have been 2 updates. So an option which shows what differences there are in BOINC option, if someone wants to download the whole package, wouldn't be bad.

Else they'll end up on any of the forums of the projects anyway, where our first question is: What BOINC version do you use?

So try to keep up to date on BOINC versions, or give a choice. BOINC 5.6.x is about to come out. Just a pointer. Will you still only do 5.4.9 or will you change to the first RC of 5.6.x?

---

Taking about branding, it's importance etc.

I was never happy with the way BOINC installs - UCB goes to \\Program Files\\BOINC even it was installed 30 times into different folder so user has to choose appropriate folder for the 31st time? Any reason for that?

I understand branding introduce different skin (and possibly different functinality - we can assume BoincStudio with richer functionality as another branding). It' fine.
Upgrading BBC/BOINC with a new UCB version that fix some important issues goes to different folders hence user is loosing all the progress made so far (I known it can be saved, but common user doesn't - we have heard a lot of moans on CPDN due to this behaviour).

(I don't remember how GR behaves there so I can't tell - I abandomed testing long time ago; most projects are not supported)

Another point where installed folder doesn't take into account and this branding goes blind when it goes to even start BOINC: install procedure.

Any reason for this? Look like I'm missing or overlooked something...
(just curious why BOINC doesn't take into account already installed folder.)

Can somebody put some light on this issue?

---

GR has an option to install BOINC to any directory you choose, I know that much

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* as rom points out the GR client is the same as the standard client, except for some graphics. it uses the same default directory locations so upgrades/crossgrades/whatever should not be an issue. we are not using v5.4.9 any longer: we update the version we distribute regularly. so far maybe we've skipped a build or two, but we pretty much keep up. (i only mentioned v5.4.9 previously to point out that this is the minimum AMS-compatible version, not to say it is the version we are using.)

* a longer project is list is coming; but as ML1 points out, a scroll really won't look right in the context of our design, we will do something like drop-down-selected categories, which sounds easy but which gets a bit tricky in the "join" sequence. this is in progress.

* i'd love for us to have our own forums: this is not a thing we "decided against" but it is a non-trivial enterprise and core functionality has to take a priority. maybe this was a mistake, but in any event please consider this on our to-do list. (in this thread you might very quickly get sense of how fast this list mushrooms)

* we did not ask CNET to write about us. we have no connection with them and have no control over what they say or when they say it. clearly i would have rather they hadn't written about us at this moment, but you have to put a site online at some point so we did and they found it and that's that.

now before moving on, i want to know if anyone has any problems with gridrepublic or with me which is not addressed by the above or in previous comments-- other than the issues relating to attribution to boinc and stats, which i'll take up when all else is cleared.

i'll next login tomorrow.

...matt




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