Sometimes around mid February 2008, a new Czech team Space Family was founded, joining previous Czech Boinc Team members and few others. There was just one problem: Space Family did not start from beginning (0 C$T of team credit), they started (officially) with Czech Boinc Team's credit by renaming their teams to Space Family. Should be no problems, as CBT was actually supposed to be "their team".



But there was a problem. Not all credit, which belonged to CBT, has been crunched by CBT members and not all credit, contained in SF (up to 34,119,853 C$T on 9 Jul 2008), has been crunched by both CBT and SF members. Overall BOINC-wide. Who is interested, can take a look at this BOINC dev thread and few other projects' threads, linked from there.



Back to SETI@Home. To get some nice startup portfolio, you have to take a look for some fat, rich and dead (or at least apparently inactive long enough) team, ask for its foundership and kick off all previous members. On Seti it was not that obvious, but it happened like this on most other projects.

Team with ID=19786 seemed to be unused, so it was chosen to be renamed to Space Family. From Detailed statistics for team "Space Family":


BoincSynergy's Team member Movements for Space Family in SETI@Home page with past team ID=19786's members. First CBT / SF member to come was Barbar on 14 Dec 2007, long after the team have built nearly its whole credit, mostly by user ID=2601 now SNG@AUSTRIA-NATIONAL-TEAM.AT (started there on 07 Nov 2006 with 0 C$T and left the team on 23 Jul 2007 with 6,629,799 C$T). From Detailed statistics for user "SNG@AUSTRIA-NATIONAL-TEAM.AT":


(It remains questionable, why other 2 members also left the team on 23 Jul 2007. User aalavandhaann remained crunching teamless until 01 Nov 2007, when he entered E.T.HUNTERS. User reveler also continued to crunch teamless.)

A look at the WayBackMachine Internet Archive: I've tried to find some statistics export files: and found 3 unique team xml files available, although with no creation dates, but their creation date can be approximated to the creation date of the last team in the file (highest team ID).
I've found no users stats exports stored, possibly because of their huge size.

27-Apr-2006:
<team>
 <id>19786</id>
 <type>2</type>
 <name>Systema Austria &amp; members</name>
 <userid>2601</userid>
 <total_credit>41181.282764</total_credit>
 <expavg_credit>72.729925</expavg_credit>                   team RAC = 72.73
 <expavg_time>1140659366.621760</expavg_time>        = 23-Feb-2006 1:49:27
 <nusers>2</nusers>
  <founder_name>Systema - Human Information Systems</founder_name>
 <create_time>0</create_time>
 <url>www.systema.co.at</url>
<name_html>Systema Austria &amp; members</name_html>
 <country>Austria</country>
</team>
Last team in the file:
<team>
 <id>125639</id>
 <type>0</type>
 <name>axiomatrix</name>
 <userid>148804</userid>
 <total_credit>27.421073</total_credit>
 <expavg_credit>2.715154</expavg_credit>
 <expavg_time>1146152055.884610</expavg_time>
 <nusers>0</nusers>
  <founder_name>axiomatrix</founder_name>
 <create_time>1146151986</create_time>          = 27-Apr-2006 15:33:06
 <country>United Kingdom</country>
</team>


18-May-2006:
<team>
 <id>19786</id>
 <type>2</type>
 <name>Systema Austria &amp; members</name>
 <userid>2601</userid>
 <total_credit>41181.282764</total_credit>
 <expavg_credit>72.729925</expavg_credit>                   team RAC = 72.73
 <expavg_time>1140659366.621760</expavg_time>        = 23-Feb-2006 1:49:27
 <nusers>2</nusers>
  <founder_name>Systema - Human Information Systems</founder_name>
 <create_time>0</create_time>
 <url>www.systema.co.at</url>
<name_html>Systema Austria &amp; members</name_html>
 <country>Austria</country>
</team>
Last team in the file:
<team>
 <id>126030</id>
 <type>0</type>
 <name>~Deathcoil~</name>
 <userid>7966523</userid>
 <total_credit>29.202626</total_credit>
 <expavg_credit>2.891225</expavg_credit>
 <expavg_time>1147980578.878200</expavg_time>
 <nusers>1</nusers>
  <founder_name>tubbana</founder_name>
 <create_time>1147980308</create_time>          = 18-May-2006 19:25:08
 <url>koti.mbnet.fi/tubbana</url>
 <country>None</country>
</team>


2-Jan-2007:
<team>
 <id>19786</id>
 <type>2</type>
 <name>Systema Austria &amp; members</name>
 <userid>2601</userid>
 <total_credit>1941144.406910</total_credit>
 <expavg_credit>20544.189662</expavg_credit>              team RAC = 20,544.19
 <expavg_time>1167792143.604370</expavg_time>        = 3-Jan-2007 2:42:24
 <nusers>4</nusers>
  <founder_name>Systema - Human Information Systems</founder_name>
 <create_time>0</create_time>
 <url>www.systema.co.at</url>
<name_html>Systema Austria &amp; members</name_html>
 <country>Austria</country>
</team>
Last team in the file:
<team>
 <id>130448</id>
 <type>0</type>
 <name>Debian!</name>
 <userid>8381231</userid>
 <total_credit>204.686946</total_credit>
 <expavg_credit>19.870806</expavg_credit>
 <expavg_time>1167781042.401670</expavg_time>        = 2-Jan-2007 23:37:22
 <nusers>2</nusers>
  <founder_name>Nivek</founder_name>
 <create_time>1167745613</create_time>          = 2-Jan-2007 13:46:53
<name_html>Debian!</name_html>
 <country>Germany</country>
</team>

According to the files, team with ID=19786 was Austrian team, it's name (during at least 27-Apr-2006 - 2-Jan-2007) was "Systema Austria & members" and founder name was "Systema - Human Information Systems", again the ID=2601.

Two more queries for SETI@Home Top Teams (with offset=60 and offset=80) revealed 3 pages containing team with ID=19786, from dates:
12.3.2007: Rank=82 Name=SNG Austria & members Members=1 RAC=24,282.91 Total credit=3,543,889.27 Country=Austria
19.3.2007: Rank=76 Name=SNG Austria & members Members=1 RAC= 26,242.35 Total credit=3,732,556.06 Country=Austria
22.3.2007: Rank=76 Name=SNG Austria & members Members=1 RAC=26,306.03 Total credit=3,822,275.29 Country=Austria

Everywhere still the same Austrian user from the same Austrian team. Until the Winter 2007...

-----

I'd like to vote for renaming this team with ID=19786 to it's last known name "SNG Austria & members", setting its country to "Austria" and making user with ID=2601 back the team's founder.

Peter

---

Look at what this team "Space Family" has gained on their best 5 days of highjacking teams all over different BOINC projects and renaming them.



You can see where this graphic comes from HERE on that statistics page that Peter posted. They only have 20+ members with nowhere near enough crunching power to earn that by legit means. Over 6 Mllion of those credits were when they stole our team "Teddies" at Rosetta, which we have since recovered thanks to the Rosetta admins. A few other admins have taken action against this "Space Family" too.

Please read THIS thread at the BOINC Dev forums that Peter already posted admins. I hope that you will take action too.

Thanks
Will.

Peter's spent a lot of time researching this problem and documenting what he's discovered in threads on Rosetta, boinc_dev and Predictor. The admins on some projects (even Predictor) have already returned hijacked teams to their original rightful owners.

It would be a good idea for members of lesser-known teams that have had periods of crunching inactivity to check their accounts on all their projects to see whether their team is still intact and they still belong to it (same team name, all or most of the same members as before).

Barbar is back from his holiday and posted following on Space Family's Czech forum:

Barbar wrote:

Ahoj všem, jsem zpět z dovolené. Zatím jen zběžně jsem přeběhl fóra nemám čas na vyčerpávající reakci, ale protože se na moji reakci čeká, tak alespoň stručně:

Převod týmů jsem prováděl vždy jen já a nikdo jiný ze Space Family za to nemůže. O převod týmů jsem zažádal před mým připojením ke Space Family a to jak v dávné minulosti, tak krátce před připojením ke Space Family. Vlastní převzetí týmu pak mohlo v ojedinělých případech proběhnout až po sloučení. Nikdo jiný ze Space Family tak za to nenese odpovědnost a vyjma náznaku Hadrovi to nikdo ani nevěděl. Seznam převzatých týmů nemám, ale většina jich zde snad byla již zmíněna.

Při vlastním převodu jsem využil pravidel nastavených tvůrci systému. Netušil jsem, že se může stát, že by email informující o žádosti o převod týmu founderovi nedošel. V tom případě je systém špatně nastaven a něco by se s tím mělo dělat obecně.

Nikdy jsem nepožádal o převzetí žádného projektu u CNT či boinc.cz (s jejich problémem na CPDN nemám nic společného).

Chci poděkovat Merlinovi, Hadrovi, MIZovi a dalším z našeho týmu, kteří se mě zastali (to neznamená, že se mnou musejí souhlasit). Bez nich bych ze Space Family odešel, což jsem vlastně na některých projektech ještě před dovolenou udělal, takže se průběžně, jak bude čas, vrátím. Omlouvám se jim za čas, který museli vydat na vysvětlování a obhajoby v době, kdy jsem zde nebyl.

Omlouvám se i ostatním, kterých se mé jednání nějak dotklo. Převzaté týmy vrátíme. V současné době ale neeviduji žádnou žádost na žádném na převzetí foundera, takže se budu muset s vedením našeho týmu domluvit, jak to uděláme fakticky.

Co mě trochu mrzí je, že jsem ani na Rosetě ani jinde neobdržel od admina projektu email, který by mě informoval, že jsem z něčeho nařčen a umožnil mi tak reagovat. S ohledem na moji pouze základní znalost angličtiny nejsem schopen sledovat a hlavně reagovat na fórech jednotlivých projektů.

Všechny prosím o trpělivost, neboť BOINC pro mne pouze okrajovou záležitostí a nemohu mu tak vyčlenit příliš času. Jsou v životě důležitější věci.

I'll try to translate it into English (please bear with my approach), without any further comments:

Hello to everyone, I'm back from holiday. I've just briefly run through the forums and have no time for a comprehensive response, but because my response is expected, at least briefly:

I've done the team transfers personally, just me alone and none else from Space Family is responsible for it. I've asked for team transfers prior to my joining to Space Family, in the far past and also shortly prior to joining Space Family. Respective team takeovers then could sporadically happen after the merger. Thus none from Space Family could be liable for it and except giving a glimpse to Hadra, none else ever knew about. I do not have a list of the teams taken over, but the majority of them have been here possibly mentioned.

During the respective transfer I've taken advantage of the rules, set by the system architects. I've not anticipated, that it could happen, that the email, informing about the request for team ownership transfer, would not be delivered to the founder. In such case the system is incorrectly set up and something should be done with it in general.

I've never asked for taking over any project of CNT (Czech National Team) or boinc.cz (I have nothing in common with their problem on CPDN).

I'd like to thank Merlin, Hadra, MIZ and others from our team, who sticked up for me (what does not necessarily mean, that they have to agree with me). Without them I'd leave Space Family, what I've actually done on some projects already prior to my vacation, so as the time will allow, I'll consecutively, come back. I apologize to them for the time, which was necessary for the explanations and advocacy during the time, when I was away.

I also apologize to others, who might have been somehow hurt with my behaviour. We will return the taken-over teams. But currently I've not noticed any request on any of them for team foundership transfer, so I'll have to arrange it with our team's captaincy, how to actually accomplish it.

What I partially feel bad about is that, neither on Rosetta, nor elsewhere, I've received an email from project admin, informing me about what I've been accused of, and allowed me to respond. With respect to my just basic knowledge of English language, I'm not able to follow and especially respond to forums of particular projects.

I'm asking all for patience, because BOINC is just a marginal thing for me and I can not devote much time to it. There are more important things in life.

Peter

So this guy is blaming the system for allowing him to do it, and that he didn't anticipate that the system didn't/wouldn't/couldn't email the original founder of sieged teams. To some extent, I can understand his point. But what about the ethics involved? Does he not take responsibility for his actions? Did he really think it was ok to 'take over' a bunch of teams thinking that those who wanted to keep their teams would prevent it, and those that didn't prevent it deserve to have their team taken away from them?

There's something very disturbing about his logic.

So this guy is blaming the system for allowing him to do it, and that he didn't anticipate that the system didn't/wouldn't/couldn't email the original founder of sieged teams. To some extent, I can understand his point. But what about the ethics involved? Does he not take responsibility for his actions? Did he really think it was ok to 'take over' a bunch of teams thinking that those who wanted to keep their teams would prevent it, and those that didn't prevent it deserve to have their team taken away from them?

There's something very disturbing about his logic.

Unfortunately, there are some people with no ethics.

---

BOINC WIKI

I also find it disturbing that in the top post of the Space Family forum thread that Pepo links to, Merlin should find it necessary to call himself 'chief of diplomacy Space Family'. I hope Space Family is the only BOINC team that needs one of these.

'Diplomacy' probably seemed an easier option than an unreserved apology.