By now you've heard that we will be shutting down work distribution at the end of March and putting the SETI@home servers into a hibernation state. I'd imagine that there are some emotional responses. I'm certainly going through the stages of grief, even though I'm hoping that it won't be a permanent state.

The unemotional analysis is that it's always been a matter of resources. Not only money, but time and personnel. We've been aware from the beginning that the time we spent keeping the project up and running was time we weren't working on post-processing. Our fundraising goals, what we needed to do everything simultaneously without falling behind, was always around $1M per year. We never came close. And without that level of resources, decades of computer time weren't really resulting in candidate lists that we could reobserve. The last 18 months we've been devoting more of our time to the post-processing, but our remaining resources were running out faster than our science results were arriving. And that's what really prompted this decision, the fear that we would run out of resources before we got our results.

Even then, it's hard to put a halt to a process that you gave 20 years of your life. I certainly haven't achieved everything I wanted to with SETI@home. I've still got my plans for SETI@home version 10, there was just never time to implement them. Maybe when we've finished our results papers I'll dust them off, assuming I can find the resources.

I know some of you are upset that you donated only to see the public participation part of the project end. If you donated for the disk array, we'll still need that. Jeff is in the process of assembling it. If you gave money in the annual drive, we'll have bills to pay all the way to the end (including page charges for the papers).

As part of my grieving process, I'm planning to post more frequently. That's not hard since my last post was 3.5 years ago.

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

Always hoped for the Big Bang exit. Not the whimper....
I am grieving also.
Just past my 20th anniversary of program and group membership and hopeful participation last month, over the life time of how many computers i cant even recall.
Now where to Trek to from here is the question.
Hope to hear a Wow soon!

Al

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"Its not what the world holds for you. Its what you bring to the world."

Been a thrill to be just a small part of this bigger picture --been here since 2003 not a huge info cruncher by any means but part of this anyway ---they are out there and its only a mater of time!!!!!! I hope im still alive when that happens Thank you !!!!!!!

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Hello Eric,
I am , like you, also disappointed.
I think all your team is disappointed, sad....
I want to say thank you for the 20 past years of research, efforts,....
It would be nice if before end of march 2020, someone could find a WOW signal.
Take care, greetings to Jeff, David, Dan and Matt.
With hope to read in close future , you start again.
Best regards. Look only "my" team ID ! It says enough.

By now you've heard that we will be shutting down work distribution at the end of March and putting the SETI@home servers into a hibernation state. I'd imagine that there are some emotional responses. I'm certainly going through the stages of grief, even though I'm hoping that it won't be a permanent state.

The unemotional analysis is that it's always been a matter of resources. Not only money, but time and personnel. We've been aware from the beginning that the time we spent keeping the project up and running was time we weren't working on post-processing. Our fundraising goals, what we needed to do everything simultaneously without falling behind, was always around $1M per year. We never came close. And without that level of resources, decades of computer time weren't really resulting in candidate lists that we could reobserve. The last 18 months we've been devoting more of our time to the post-processing, but our remaining resources were running out faster than our science results were arriving. And that's what really prompted this decision, the fear that we would run out of resources before we got our results.

Even then, it's hard to put a halt to a process that you gave 20 years of your life. I certainly haven't achieved everything I wanted to with SETI@home. I've still got my plans for SETI@home version 10, there was just never time to implement them. Maybe when we've finished our results papers I'll dust them off, assuming I can find the resources.

I know some of you are upset that you donated only to see the public participation part of the project end. If you donated for the disk array, we'll still need that. Jeff is in the process of assembling it. If you gave money in the annual drive, we'll have bills to pay all the way to the end (including page charges for the papers).

As part of my grieving process, I'm planning to post more frequently. That's not hard since my last post was 3.5 years ago.

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Even then, it's hard to put a halt to a process that you gave 20 years of your life. I certainly haven't achieved everything I wanted to with SETI@home. I've still got my plans for SETI@home version 10, there was just never time to implement them. Maybe when we've finished our results papers I'll dust them off, assuming I can find the resources.

So true... Hope it will be pause not stop.

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SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

By now you've heard that we will be shutting down work distribution at the end of March and putting the SETI@home servers into a hibernation state. I'd imagine that there are some emotional responses. I'm certainly going through the stages of grief, even though I'm hoping that it won't be a permanent state.

The unemotional analysis is that it's always been a matter of resources. Not only money, but time and personnel. We've been aware from the beginning that the time we spent keeping the project up and running was time we weren't working on post-processing. Our fundraising goals, what we needed to do everything simultaneously without falling behind, was always around $1M per year. We never came close. And without that level of resources, decades of computer time weren't really resulting in candidate lists that we could reobserve. The last 18 months we've been devoting more of our time to the post-processing, but our remaining resources were running out faster than our science results were arriving. And that's what really prompted this decision, the fear that we would run out of resources before we got our results.

Even then, it's hard to put a halt to a process that you gave 20 years of your life. I certainly haven't achieved everything I wanted to with SETI@home. I've still got my plans for SETI@home version 10, there was just never time to implement them. Maybe when we've finished our results papers I'll dust them off, assuming I can find the resources.

I know some of you are upset that you donated only to see the public participation part of the project end. If you donated for the disk array, we'll still need that. Jeff is in the process of assembling it. If you gave money in the annual drive, we'll have bills to pay all the way to the end (including page charges for the papers).

As part of my grieving process, I'm planning to post more frequently. That's not hard since my last post was 3.5 years ago.

Thank you,

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Good Luck Eric - Great Job done!

It may feel like loosing a child for U - so big hugs from Germany!

I am glad to was a part of all this - Thank U for 21 Year's of Inspiration.
I will miss the stylishest Screensaver ever.

Remember Eric - A end is allways a beginning!

Eric,

I know that you wouldn't have done this unless you were quite convinced that it was absolutely necessary.

I back you 100%

Get this Nebula up and running and give us the next stage work to look at.

CS

+1

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

In the downtime, perhaps its time to consider how funds are asked for from volunteers.

Instead of asking for a general donation why not ask for specific budget items?
Allow donors to select exactly where their money goes.
If not enough is coming in to pay the power bills - ask for donations for the power! People will respond.

Look at how well the disk drive went as a prime example.

Just my 2 cents worth.

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Do you Good Search for Seti@Home? http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=888957
Or Good Shop? http://www.goodshop.com/?charityid=888957

You know speaking for myself I would never have considered staying on the cutting edge with my computer hardware had it not been for SETi@Home. Having said that I would seek out some corporate sponsors for this very reason as I am sure Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and perhaps others would be willing to pony up some moola if it was explained to them, like they were two year old kids, that the vast volunteer body of the distributed computing had upgraded hardware MOSTLY as a result of the projects themselves. To have a shutdown would be counter productive to their bottom lines. Food for thought during the hibernation, so get those spiffy suits ready boys, there are some doors that need to be knocked on and telephones waiting to ring.


As to the other I really do appreciate your response to us, looking forward to more in the future. Please by all means stay in touch!!!

Antony

It's been a great run Eric. I joined with a 386dx4 in May of '99, and I've been active since. While I may swap over to another project, rest-assured my computers will ALWAYS be linked to SETI@Home if and when you fire it back up.

Rick Baran
USN Ret

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I just saw the notice about this, and it's sad to see. I joined SETI@Home in May 1999, and was using a 350mhz AMD K6-2 at the time. I have been running SETI@Home on and off ever since. I just built a new PC last year and have enjoyed seeing SETI@Home run on it, faster than I've ever seen on any of my own PCs. I hope volunteer work continues again some day.

It's been a great run Eric. I joined with a 386dx4 in May of '99, and I've been active since. While I may swap over to another project, rest-assured my computers will ALWAYS be linked to SETI@Home if and when you fire it back up.

I didn't know there was such a thing as a 386DX4. I thought the fastest 386 was AMD's 386DX-40.

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Because SETI is pausing work distribution, now is a good time for us to pause contributions. Thanks for cutting us off SETI.

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Because SETI is pausing work distribution, now is a good time for us to pause contributions. Thanks for cutting us off SETI.

-1

Not really. The project needs funds to finish out the final Data Analysis on the remote super computer cluster they are borrowing. As well as the funding and time to write the "results to date paper" as well as the "tools paper" that David has posted about.

This is the distinction between a volunteer researcher and someone who depends on the project for their "bread and butter". We can eat even if we stop. They can't.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Hi Eric, Hi SETI Team,

THANKS for all.

The aim of SETI (not yet '@home !') make me dream when I was 12 (it was on another century !), and I (aka my computer(s)...) crushed data for SETI half of my life. It is so sad to see this 'no tasks available'. Thanks again for creating that, and for BOINC, and for all...

I want to believe. One day or another we will find this intelligence.

My best wishes for the next.

Tom

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I've been running this since 15 May 1999 -- sorry to see it go, and sorry ET hasn't knocked yet.

Jim K

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I also have been running this since the late 1990s. Over the years I lost a parent and grew from a young adult to a middle aged guy. It's been a part of my life for so long now it makes me wonder if one little but of information I processed all those years and all those computers found something unusual. I may never know. But, I won't forget and I still have my t-shirt for the 15th anniversary if I'm not mistaken.

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Just curious, what was your biggest expense? If you had more volunteers working on the source code, would you be able to maintain SETI@home running?

Just curious, what was your biggest expense? If you had more volunteers working on the source code, would you be able to maintain SETI@home running?

There is a lot more than merely maintaining code for a project like this.

Note that we've been running on 'borrowed time' for a long time now piggy-backed on funding for the more general Boinc system. Note Eric's comment:

... Our fundraising goals, what we needed to do everything simultaneously without falling behind, was always around $1M per year...

I'm completely outside of the project so I can only give guesses for the ranking of costs:

• First cost is most likely the cost of the University facilities!
  
• Manpower/staff (even researchers need a living wage!)
  
• Internet connection/bandwidth costs
  
• Hosting (colocation) costs
  

For the last few years, the main equipment and disks in use have all come from some very generous donations and fundraising.

And then for likely a totally untold cost (likely generously mainly from whatever spare or personal time the s@h team might have,) is the cost of all the 'sysadmin' time and work put into keeping the tangled plumbing of the s@h system running!


There is now radio data available that can be freely downloaded from a number of recent projects that can be openly searched by volunteers setting up their own systems. You can volunteer to set up a whole new Boinc project! Beware that a lot of time and a lot of internet bandwidth are needed...


Hope that gives a good answer for further thought. Can a group of us 'club together' to form an alternate search?...

Keep searchin',
Martin

(Edit: spelling)

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

I also have been running this since the late 1990s. Over the years I lost a parent and grew from a young adult to a middle aged guy. It's been a part of my life for so long now it makes me wonder if one little but of information I processed all those years and all those computers found something unusual. I may never know. But, I won't forget and I still have my t-shirt for the 15th anniversary if I'm not mistaken.

@Todd: Me too, on much of what you write. But what is this t-shirt?? Never heard of one, and can't see any mention on the site.
Also, does anyone know: If I remove SETI@home from my BOINC projects in order to clear the last units from the task list -- which I am for sentimental reasons reluctant to do -- would that have any effect on my receiving notification if the project ever resumes?
Eric

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