It would be nice if there wre some indication of whether a BOINC project is being used for commercial, educational or scientific use so that it is east to distinguish between projects that benefit humanity and projects that contribute to some corpoations bottom line without remuneration to the project participants

This is a GREAT idea.
We have spent a lot of time looking for 100% public / non-profit projects, and this would be nice for most of volunteers.

Yes,
please provide me with such list and I'll add it to my table specification.

I think it could be also useful something to distinguish (in all the pages of that site) between project in alpha/beta status to the others. For example, adding the word "alpha/beta", or typing in italic.

I think it's important because maybe some people wants to crunch alpha/beta projects only in some computers, and the other projects in any other computers.

I think that because I do that. I crunch all projects in one host, but only the projects that aren't alpha/beta are crunching in the rest of my hosts. I don't want to use unstable software in all my hosts for security reasons.

Hmm, I use to agree with public vs. alpha/beta distinction but...

For example SZTAKI is (was) unsusable as public project (instant crashes on AMD, neverending/never validated WUs and the like lasting for weeks and months) and is listed as public.

Some projects listed under beta - like Malaria - may be more realible and with better support then some listed as public.

In any case, some measurement of quality (reliability of project and it's application, support from project team etc.) is useful.
I'm giving each project a smiley.

That kind of already exists, but the rating system is quite bad. 10 points to divide, between 30+ projects??

Yes, I'm aware of that.

It would say rating system for publicity is not suitable for relibility rating - it simply serves different purpose.

But the system is done. What about more than one rating? Give points for different things, instead of just "I like the project" points.

Agreed, how about a "reliability" rating given by the users to rank the quality of WUs issued, stability of the servers, etc. and then have a separate rating (more like a stat) for the track record of the projects servers - perhaps given as a percent of time online. The server status (for scheduler) is already checked, just need to add logging. For example, this last fiasco with Einstein file servers would have hurt the project's track record but the WUs and application are still good, just spotty server activity.

THis is a great Idea.
I tend to try to do this mentally by visiting each of the web pages of the individual projects, but when it is unclear what their intentions are, I just dont sign up. It would be great if it were clear up front so I dont waste my time on doing some billion dollar pharmaceutical company's work for them when I could be helping to improve the use of measures against malaria for a smaller project that cannot afford their own number crunching.

I had similar questions about project not-for-profit status, and after reading this thread I decided to do some checking into the whole issue. I was able to find adequate info on all but a handful of projects (see "Projects With Unknown Profit Status" below). I have sources for all of the info here, which I'm happy to send, if anyone wants them.

DISCLAIMER: I'm using info gleaned from the web and emails here, but I have not independently verified it (I have no idea how I'd even do that), so please no angry responses if any of the information here is incorrect. If you do have any corrections or additions to suggest, please reply to this thread. I thought this info might be helpful to crunchers in general, and especially to those new to BOINC, but it's not certain to be 100% accurate. Consider it a work in progress.

Here's the list:

PROJECTS THAT SEEM TO BE NOT-FOR-PROFIT:

ABC@home
ABC@home beta
BBC Climate Change
BURP
Chess960@home
climateprediction.net
DepSpid
Docking@home
Einstein@home
Leiden Classical
LHC@home
malariacontrol.net
Nano-Hive@home
PrimeGrid
Proteins@home
QMC@home
RALPH@home
Rectilinear Crossing Number
Riesel Sieve
Rosetta@home
Seasonal Attribution
SETI@home
SIMAP@home
Spinhenge@home
SZTAKI Desktop Grid
TANPAKU
uFluids@home
VTU@home
World Community Grid
XtremLab


PROJECTS THAT MIGHT BE NOT-FOR-PROFIT, BUT WHOSE STATUS IS A LITTLE UNCLEAR:

TMRL DRTG:
I found some info in a forum that seems to support this project as being not-for-profit:
"No profit is realized from the results of this project. The results will be posted on Hashbreaker.com as a FREE download."
However, I also found another thread that seems to dispute that. So the status on this one is unclear. Any clarification from someone more knowledgeable on the project would be helpful.

WEP-M+2 Project:
I received an email from James Wanless of the project that is a little vague and unclear on the issue: "The project itself is non-profit - assuming the WEP factorization can be shown to work, I may plan to license this latter to other projects (eg RSA, Fermat-number-factorizing) in the future." So I'll let each user make up his or her own mind on that one.


PROJECTS WITH UNKNOWN PROFIT STATUS:

BelgianBeer@home: (Project specs unknown per website as of 2/8/07.)
HashClash: (Project website unreachable as of 2/12/07.)
Orbit@home: (Unable to reach project admins.)
Pirates@home: (Project completed.)
Predictor@home: (Project offline as of 9/6/06.)
Project Neuron: (Unable to reach project admins.)
RenderFarm@home: (Unable to reach project admins.)


If anyone has anything to add to the list, please let me know. Hope this helps clear up some of the questions and concerns about this issue. I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies - again, please do not consider this set in stone.

I have some comments.

Pirates@Home is not completed, they are playing with forum code now. It's used to help develop BOINC, it's definitely not for profit.

I'm the admin at Renderfarm@Home, and I can tell you it's not for profit. The project purpose is similar to BURP, only I do it more "quick n dirty". For example, I doubt I'll ever do a web interface so anybody can upload stuff, instead I'd leave it as a manual thing where people send me the files via email or something...
I should be contactable at the usual address that most websites have, that is webmaster @ domain name (that would be the project's domain name). If that doesn't work, let me know.

HashClash is a completed project. I think it was for a thesis or similar. Doubt any profit. Hopefully they come back, and maybe do something similar searching SHA-1 collisions (MD5 was used previously).

BelgianBeer is a quite informal project (even more than Renderfarm ). They have no real purpose yet, they just wanted to try out setting a server (same way I started). Beware, admins may be as drunk as their users

Back on line as of Feb. 06, 2007

Also, I see you list RALPH, so you should probably list SETI Beta too.

Great. Thanks to both for the feedback and input. I have emails in to the last few unknowns. Once I hear back I'll repost the (hopefully complete) list along with links to sources for posterity, if anyone is ever interested down the road.

I haven't heard back from either Orbit@home or Project Neuron re: this issue (I sent emails to webmaster@... , as PovAddict suggested, but no replies so far). And their account creation is disabled, so I'm unable to post the question on their boards. If anyone has an account with either/both of those projects, I'd really appreciate it if you could post the question there and let me know what you find out, as I'm at a bit of a dead-end for the moment.

Or if anyone has any info they could pass on about either project as far as not-for-profit status, that would be helpful too. I can't imagine how either project could possibly be used for profit, but for the sake of accuracy I'd rather not assume so. Thanks in advance.

Neuron will make no profit its aiming to improve some aspects of BOINC, that is quite clear from the messages in the forum and also the papers available to read on the site

As far as orbit goes, the project developer has applied for grants to such agencies as NSF and NASA, without success so far.

I can't conceive of any such granting agency allowing for-profit status, and without such funding it is clear there will never be a live project.

I do have an account there, and if you still need explicit confirmation, let me know and I will make a post there. Not sure if Dr Tricarico still even reads his own board though, let alone replying to mail.

Thanks, picante, for collecting this status information -- like many others, I have no wish to contribute cycles to a for-profit entity, and having an explicit list is a valuable service, IMO.

That's good enough for me - I was reasonably sure those two weren't for profit. I'm fine going with that. Thanks again to all for helping to fill in the gaps.

Here's the basically complete list, with links to sources for the info (where possible). For responses I received via email, I'll just quote them below.

PROJECTS THAT SEEM TO BE NOT-FOR-PROFIT:

ABC@home
ABC@home beta
BBC Climate Change
BelgianBeer@home
BURP
Chess960@home
climateprediction.net
DepSpid
Docking@home
Einstein@home
HashClash
Leiden Classical
LHC@home
malariacontrol.net
Nano-Hive@home
Orbit@home
Pirates@home
Predictor@home
PrimeGrid
Project Neuron
Proteins@home
QMC@home: Per email from Martin Korth: "QMC is non-profit fundamental research, funded by the german research society 'Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft' (DFG, the main german governmental institution for the funding of science) as part of the special research devision 'Sonderforschungsbereich 424.'"
RALPH@home
Rectilinear Crossing Number
RenderFarm@home
Riesel Sieve
Rosetta@home
Seasonal Attribution
SETI@home
SETI@home Beta
SIMAP@home
Spinhenge@home
SZTAKI Desktop Grid
TANPAKU
uFluids@home
VTU@home
World Community Grid
XtremLab

PROJECTS THAT MIGHT BE NOT-FOR-PROFIT, BUT WHOSE STATUS IS A LITTLE UNCLEAR:

TMRL DRTG:
I found some info in a forum that seems to support this project as being not-for-profit.
However, I also found another thread that seems to dispute that. So the status on this one is unclear. Any clarification from someone more knowledgeable on the project would be helpful.

WEP-M+2 Project:
I received an email from James Wanless of the project that is a little vague and unclear on the issue: "The project itself is non-profit - assuming the WEP factorization can be shown to work, I may plan to license this latter to other projects (eg RSA, Fermat-number-factorizing) in the future." So I'll let each user make up his or her own mind on that one.


DISCLAIMER: I'm using info gleaned from the web and emails here, but I have not independently verified it (I have no idea how I'd even do that), so please no angry responses if any of the information here is incorrect. If you do have any corrections or additions to suggest, especially for the two "maybes," please reply to this thread. I thought this info might be helpful to crunchers in general, and especially to those new to BOINC, but it's not certain to be 100% accurate. Consider it a work in progress.

Would it not be more sensible to use percentages rather than actual points to avoid the "only xx points" problem which will just keep recuring in the future ("only 100 points"...)

I agree with having multiple ratings for different things (reliability, importance, level of communication, community etc.)

How about arbitrary numbers that are converted to percentages? Same as resource shares.

Predictor is not for profit, but.......................