I like it. Access to the worlds largest supercomputer for a maximum of maybe a couple thousand a year, max.
You, Sir, may be On To Something.

In another post here this link was provided that shows 146k active users with 227,312 computers crunching. We are putting the WU's away at a rate of 192,403.2 GigaFLOPS. That's quite a lot!

Now imagine a few commercial interest get in there with deep pockets that need the resource. You provide x amount of hours per month to them and they have a number amount per the amount of work you provide. IE your 'credit' with them. Seems pretty simple, after all the backend contract / programming etc is completed. The only major thing holding it back? Well all the deep pocket commercial interest spend their money on super computer time at various points around the globe. But this could be a way to steal that time and money from them!

The question that has not been answered yet is what are the restrictions in place, if any, in regards to the use of the Boinc infrastructure.

---

"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

There's going to be a market there for medium deep and shallow pockets. Forget the big guys, we want the other ones.
One thing we'd need to know is how to calculate some kind of average delivery time for the results...but at this price they shouldn't be too demanding.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

The question that has not been answered yet is what are the restrictions in place, if any, in regards to the use of the Boinc infrastructure.

Pfft. Big corporate has shown us the way here. Write a slightly different version, take it out of the public domain and copyright it. Instant new ballgame.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

I like it. Access to the worlds largest supercomputer for a maximum of maybe a couple thousand a year, max.
You, Sir, may be On To Something.

In another post here this link was provided that shows 146k active users with 227,312 computers crunching. We are putting the WU's away at a rate of 192,403.2 GigaFLOPS. That's quite a lot!

Now imagine a few commercial interest get in there with deep pockets that need the resource. You provide x amount of hours per month to them and they have a number amount per the amount of work you provide. IE your 'credit' with them. Seems pretty simple, after all the backend contract / programming etc is completed. The only major thing holding it back? Well all the deep pocket commercial interest spend their money on super computer time at various points around the globe. But this could be a way to steal that time and money from them!

Boinc already has more than a fair share of commercial interests in it. There is a large number of projects being done as research for "humanitarian" reasons, research of course.. but the obvious goal is for genetic engineering, doing DNA research which can be easily capitalized upon. Of course they might have to change something else in the DNA sequence to "own" it, but they can certainly use the "research" to further commercial enterprises.

And they do not even have to redeem the "points"!

---

Janice

Boinc already has more than a fair share of commercial interests in it. There is a large number of projects being done as research for "humanitarian" reasons, research of course.. but the obvious goal is for genetic engineering, doing DNA research which can be easily capitalized upon. Of course they might have to change something else in the DNA sequence to "own" it, but they can certainly use the "research" to further commercial enterprises.

And they do not even have to redeem the "points"!

The complete and total insanity of being able to 'patent' DNA sequences ranks right up there with granting multinational corps not only the status of a human being but citizenship. That aside, it would surely be nice to see them spending a few pennies to support maybe ALL the not for profit, fundamental research projects. Jeebus knows, they have enough trouble finding funding.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

Then you made your point poorly, if at all. You and I both have Classic Seti hours and Work Units. Matt said the data is still there, so, just what got dumped?

Then you made your point poorly, if at all. You and I both have Classic Seti hours and Work Units. Matt said the data is still there, so, just what got dumped?

It looked clear to me. The credits did not get transfered to BOINC. The resulting data is still intact.

Is this concept too confusing?

---

Janice

So then nothing was dumped. That there are 2 separate piles of worthless points means just that, there are 2 separate piles of worthless points.

The question that has not been answered yet is what are the restrictions in place, if any, in regards to the use of the Boinc infrastructure.

Pfft. Big corporate has shown us the way here. Write a slightly different version, take it out of the public domain and copyright it. Instant new ballgame.

BOINC is NOT public domain, it uses "the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."

Roughly, that means anyone can use BOINC for whatever purpose they want, but if they distribute or sell binaries they legally have to credit the BOINC authors, and if they have modified the BOINC source they must provide that modified BOINC source code to anyone asking for it.

This is getting out of "number crunching" and into "hair splitting". I suspect that the Politics forum would be the place for any further discussion.

                                                                  Joe

So then nothing was dumped. That there are 2 separate piles of worthless points means just that, there are 2 separate piles of worthless points.

Give it a rest. Don't get into this again. I myself am well over the relatively minor irritation of that little thoughtless slap in the face. Yes, on rereading I'll stipulate that it's not as well worded as it should have been.
You'll note I'm still with the project. Go sneer at something else.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

The question that has not been answered yet is what are the restrictions in place, if any, in regards to the use of the Boinc infrastructure.

Pfft. Big corporate has shown us the way here. Write a slightly different version, take it out of the public domain and copyright it. Instant new ballgame.

BOINC is NOT public domain, it uses "the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."

Roughly, that means anyone can use BOINC for whatever purpose they want, but if they distribute or sell binaries they legally have to credit the BOINC authors, and if they have modified the BOINC source they must provide that modified BOINC source code to anyone asking for it.

This is getting out of "number crunching" and into "hair splitting". I suspect that the Politics forum would be the place for any further discussion.

                                                                  Joe

It kind of seems like you're missing the point of the discussion. Public Domain...GNU lesser..it doesn't matter if you are paying attention. Are you saying that a different version couldn't have a different legal use status?

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

The question that has not been answered yet is what are the restrictions in place, if any, in regards to the use of the Boinc infrastructure.

Pfft. Big corporate has shown us the way here. Write a slightly different version, take it out of the public domain and copyright it. Instant new ballgame.

Well actually they can't. The standard open source licence gives you a lot of freedom to use, re-distribute and modify the code. The restriction is that whatever you do, it's still open source. You can tack it on to a commercial package, or add a commercial package to it, but the Open Source part of the code remains open source. Heck you can even charge money to support and maintain Open Source software, you just can't copyright or patent it, or change the license.

Now you could go back and write a "Boinc Lookalike" system from scratch as I don't think the actual concept is patented, and now can't be as it's now a pre-existing concept. Like the Wheel. But your new software could be covered by copyright and any licence conditions you wanted to apply to it.

Trying to prevent commercial use of Open Source software would need a whole new type of license, as would charging royalties on any work done WITH the software. Like if you write books using Linux and Open Office, it's commercial use, but you are free to do it.

The limiting factor would be getting the volunteers to provide computer resources, most projects are education / charity based. People are happy to donate time and electricity to a "good cause", but would be unwilling to help a business for free. Maybe you could fool people for a while, but I don't think that would work for long. Then it comes back to making the "credits" actually worth something. People might crunch for you if you swapped credits for ITunes credits or something?

The open source licence model doesn't prevent that happening.

Ian

The question that has not been answered yet is what are the restrictions in place, if any, in regards to the use of the Boinc infrastructure.

Pfft. Big corporate has shown us the way here. Write a slightly different version, take it out of the public domain and copyright it. Instant new ballgame.

Well actually they can't. The standard open source licence gives you a lot of freedom to use, re-distribute and modify the code. The restriction is that whatever you do, it's still open source. You can tack it on to a commercial package, or add a commercial package to it, but the Open Source part of the code remains open source. Heck you can even charge money to support and maintain Open Source software, you just can't copyright or patent it, or change the license.

Now you could go back and write a "Boinc Lookalike" system from scratch as I don't think the actual concept is patented, and now can't be as it's now a pre-existing concept. Like the Wheel. But your new software could be covered by copyright and any licence conditions you wanted to apply to it.

Trying to prevent commercial use of Open Source software would need a whole new type of license, as would charging royalties on any work done WITH the software. Like if you write books using Linux and Open Office, it's commercial use, but you are free to do it.

The limiting factor would be getting the volunteers to provide computer resources, most projects are education / charity based. People are happy to donate time and electricity to a "good cause", but would be unwilling to help a business for free. Maybe you could fool people for a while, but I don't think that would work for long. Then it comes back to making the "credits" actually worth something. People might crunch for you if you swapped credits for ITunes credits or something?

The open source licence model doesn't prevent that happening.

Ian

Thanks Ian. I never pretended to know the legalities and that was the question.
So..it's not all that easy for the originators to change the status of the.. product? Interesting. I hadn't suspected.
Although For the purposes we were discussing above, just removing the commercial entities from the master list on the boinc site would be sufficent. Are they obligated to list people there? At the least could they put them under a 'commercial' header?
Quite frankly my friend, as we say sometimes here, it chaps my ass to think about people making money from our goodwill.
I've looked at some of the more obvious commercially viable projects sites and they do everything they can to mask what they are.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

Are you saying that a different version couldn't have a different legal use status?

Precisely. If you modify GPL software, it's still covered by the original licence. If it's not, then you are in breach of the conditions the original licence gave you to modify the software in the first place.

It may be splitting hairs, but it actually gives a LOT more protection than "public domain" which doesn't have those restrictions

If something is simply "public domain" and you modify it, then you have created an "original work", which is now covered by copyright.

Ian

It kind of seems like you're missing the point of the discussion. Public Domain...GNU lesser..it doesn't matter if you are paying attention. Are you saying that a different version couldn't have a different legal use status?

Public domain is not the same as open source, is what Joe was saying. And that's a big point. According to Wikipedia, Public Domain is "Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, if the intellectual property rights have expired, and/or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited. Examples include the English language, the formulae of Newtonian physics, the works of Shakespeare and Beethoven, and the patents on powered flight."

BOINC is under copyright: "BOINC is free software, distributed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 3 or later. The University of California holds the copyright on all BOINC source code. By submitting contributions to the BOINC code, you irrevocably assign all right, title, and interest, including copyright and all copyright rights, in such contributions to The Regents of the University of California, who may then use the code for any purpose that it desires. "

Perhaps it's wise for you to go read in there first, before you continue to "miss the point of BOINC"??

---

my apologies.. I was referring originally as "public domain" as the results of the boinc crunching/calculating, not the boinc software itself. Which is how most bio-engineered boinc projects appear to be advertised.

---

Janice

It kind of seems like you're missing the point of the discussion. Public Domain...GNU lesser..it doesn't matter if you are paying attention. Are you saying that a different version couldn't have a different legal use status?

Public domain is not the same as open source, is what Joe was saying. And that's a big point. According to Wikipedia, Public Domain is "Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, if the intellectual property rights have expired, and/or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited. Examples include the English language, the formulae of Newtonian physics, the works of Shakespeare and Beethoven, and the patents on powered flight."

BOINC is under copyright: "BOINC is free software, distributed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 3 or later. The University of California holds the copyright on all BOINC source code. By submitting contributions to the BOINC code, you irrevocably assign all right, title, and interest, including copyright and all copyright rights, in such contributions to The Regents of the University of California, who may then use the code for any purpose that it desires. "

Perhaps it's wise for you to go read in there first, before you continue to "miss the point of BOINC"??

You haven't gone back and actually read the posts, have you? This is what comes of skimming. You are not commenting on the discussion we were having, you are making an argument out of nothing ... why i can't fathom. Especially as IANAB had the courtesy to address that small part of the discussion clearly and without an attitude. This small part of the discussion has been 'put to bed' in a very helpful and productive manner. I carelessly used the term 'public domain' a simple 'you don't mean public domain you mean...' would have sufficed. This is so minor a part of the core discussion I didn't use the utmost care in my phrasing, my apology for that. I just don't understand your point in making, as we say, 'a big deal' out of it.
We have managed to lose the point we were discussing though...getting the commercial entities sneaking into the project to either identify themselves clearly or even contribute a few pennies. Congrats.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

At this point this thread has wondered so far off topic and generated new controvesary.

To cover the the original basic point brought up there are a few Seti Staff that are funded by UCB. As they work for UCB they can maintain Status quo or find a better job.
Yes, there are problems with Training Interns!

I could not voice my opinion in the previous thread.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=62289
Get rid of all the paid people that do not have the time to be.
Replace them all with Interns that would love to do the job for free..

Hey that rhymes.
Paid people complain, Interns do not.

---

Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.