BOINC's funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation has ended, at least for the time being.
This funding supported me, Rom Walton, and Charlie Fenton.
We're now working on other things, although we'll stay involved in BOINC at some level.

The BOINC project will continue, and will be run according to a community-based model rather than centrally.
In essence, the people who contribute to BOINC now make the decisions about it.
This model is summarized here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ProjectGovernance and described in detail here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C6pU5RqidYBxk9oyAevm1yH1tn4Hw27oM8YpvsnR-gg

There will probably be little visible change.
The BOINC software will continue to work.
The translation system, Alpha testing project, BOINC web site,message boards, and email lists will continue to operate.
However, any new development and major bug fixes to BOINC will need to be done by volunteer programmers.
I'm confident that the BOINC community will meet the challenge.

I welcome your feedback.
Please post it to [email protected], a new email list for discussions about the BOINC project as a whole.

-- David

It has been a week since the news about the new Governance BOINC came out. Time for some of the questions that keep people busy:

Programming: "In all cases, contributors are expected to work as part of the community." You and Rom have been adding code- and bug-fixes this past week. Are you exempt from having to discuss any of your code with the rest of the community, or is this only for newcomers or only for new feature code?

Documentation: what of those users that have an editor account already, will their account continue to work as it was before?
What of those with administrator power but not mentioned as a committer?
Which changes are they allowed to make, is this with or without consent of the community/PMC?
When do they have to ask the committers for help?
Can any page be added without permission, or do I have to ask permission every time I want to add a page?

Communication channels: "The project will provide communication channels for various purposes: PMC public email list..." So far, none has been provided.

PMC: why was it decided to add a PMC?
Why not have just one or two deciders?
Who has decided who is in the initial group?
Were they all asked, or were they appointed?
Is there any transparency in how they were chosen?
How about they introduce themselves on the (PMC) email list?
When did they decide that David should become their chairman?
Why isn't there already one or two people from the community included?

Email lists: what's the boinc_admin googlegroup for and what does it add that the boinc_* email lists don't already have?
Will the boinc_* email lists from Berkeley die out now?
You ask that people email you on [email protected], but don't tell that they should go to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/boinc_admin to register as member of that group, as else they will not receive emails from that group, or answers to their question if someone chooses to only answer to boinc_admin* like what happened with the answer to Nicolás Alvarez. It isn't intuitive that these groups need registration to be able to follow the conversation on there.

The News Is Not Out There: "BOINC is a community-based open-source project." But at the same time, the community that is supposed to make this project is not informed of their role. I have made a trawl through all of the projects on the http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php list, plus some added from bookmarks. In all I searched in about 45 project forums and found discussion about this new Governance BOINC in just three (!!) of them (Bitcoin Utopia, WCG and Seti).
It's not even discussed in any of the project forums of the people named in the PMC, apart from WCG and Seti. And only in the thread on the latter has one person from the PMC answered once (Rom). All threads seem to have died out now.

News like this should have been sent through the Notices to reach as many people from the community as possible.
Also the timing of the news was a bit suspicious, posting it on the 3rd of July, right before all of America is away for pre-celebrations of the 4th of July and the start of vacation time in a lot of countries in the Northern Hemisphere. It's as if the news shouldn't have been out there, or that it needs downplaying on the importance of the change. The one line, two sentences 'News' bit on the BOINC front page didn't make it any clearer either. Even I didn't recognize it as 'THE ANNOUNCEMENT', which is why I asked you to post the news on the BOINC website.

Apart from two follow-up mails from members of the community, this news has been met with total silence. Either it isn't received by anyone, no one understands what you meant, or no one cares. Or the importance of it is lost on everyone. I would've expected something more, or at least someone else with a lot of questions like I am now sending in. But since that time, it's been total silence in this thread. So perhaps a renewed explanation is needed, or a teleconference. Put a video about it on Youtube?

Last, something that Rom said and has me thinking: "A new grant request has been submitted to the NSF based on feedback from various sources. We don't expect to hear anything back from NSF until early next year." .. does that mean that when you find new funding, that you turn off the community-based BOINC again, thank all members of the PMC and go back to how it was developed/produced before?

I'll leave it there, for now. It's possible I come up with additional questions, but will wait first to see what, if anything, I get back on these.
In the mean time, I'll link to the threads I mentioned in the three project forums, in case people want to read up on them.

Bitcoin Utopia http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/forum_thread.php?id=887
WCG http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,38168
Seti https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=77650

Jord wrote:

Programming: "In all cases, contributors are expected to work as part of the community." You and Rom have been adding code- and bug-fixes this past week. Are you exempt from having to discuss any of your code with the rest of the community, or is this only for newcomers or only for new feature code?

Difference in rolls I suppose. Committers are assigned areas of responsibility (See section 2.3) where they are expected to evaluate bug reports and code submissions. Sections 4 and 5 talk about the scope of things committers are expected to do on a day-to-day basis.

Right now most of the feature areas and the various areas of responsibility are on David's and my plate. I suspect things will start changing as we start working through the new model of doing things.

Jord wrote:

Documentation: what of those users that have an editor account already, will their account continue to work as it was before?
What of those with administrator power but not mentioned as a committer?
Which changes are they allowed to make, is this with or without consent of the community/PMC?
When do they have to ask the committers for help?
Can any page be added without permission, or do I have to ask permission every time I want to add a page?

Is there something specific you want to address? How were these things addressed before the change over?
How do you think they should be addressed now?

Jord wrote:

PMC: why was it decided to add a PMC?
Why not have just one or two deciders?

David has joked a time or two that one of his biggest fears was me being hit by a bus.

I guess you could say that the PMC is a logical outgrowth of that kind of concern. What would happen to the project if something happened with David and I. With the PMC in place there is a logical place for the community to look to keep things together.

Jord wrote:

Who has decided who is in the initial group?

David, one of his last official acts in the benevolent dictator role.

Jord wrote:

Were they all asked, or were they appointed?

Asked and they agreed to be a part of it.

Jord wrote:

Is there any transparency in how they were chosen?

Not really.

Jord wrote:

When did they decide that David should become their chairman?

June 10th

Jord wrote:

Will the boinc_* email lists from Berkeley die out now?

Not as far as I know.

Jord wrote:

Last, something that Rom said and has me thinking: "A new grant request has been submitted to the NSF based on feedback from various sources. We don't expect to hear anything back from NSF until early next year." .. does that mean that when you find new funding, that you turn off the community-based BOINC again, thank all members of the PMC and go back to how it was developed/produced before?

I don't think this is something you walk back.

----- Rom

Jord wrote:

Programming: "In all cases, contributors are expected to work as part of the community." You and Rom have been adding code- and bug-fixes this past week. Are you exempt from having to discuss any of your code with the rest of the community, or is this only for newcomers or only for new feature code?

David wrote:

The governance doc says:

Committers have no more authority over the project than contributors. Their work is visible to the community (e.g. in a commit history) and can be reviewed by the community. The key difference is that this review happens after the change is made, rather than before.

The BOINC project has transitioned to a community-based governance model. This model is summarized here and described in detail here.

I copied over the extended message to Free-DC and the following projects:

SETI@Home
World Community Grid

David Anderson wrote:
BOINC's funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation has ended, at least for the time being.
-- David

David Anderson wrote:
BOINC's funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation has ended, at least for the time being.
-- David

I think one of the visible results of this will be the end of Boinc Workshop...

Hi fellow members of the BOINC Community,

I want to address some of the points made here or in the forum threads
Jord mentioned and provide my point of view to this. As a longtime BOINC
contributor I feel honored to be a member of the PMC and I will continue
and hopefully intensify my contribution to BOINC as a project.

The PMC was established to discuss and formulate the strategic goals of
BOINC not the operational day-to-day activities of contributors and
committers. So for most people directly involved in maintaining BOINC it
is business as usual with the difference that now everything needs to be
done in free time. I hope that the PMC will encourage contributors (old
and new) to come forward and present new ideas or suggest changes to
BOINC or the governance model as a whole. I don't see this as something
set into stone and it is sometimes easier to find a majority among a
group of people than in a single individual.

From what I read in the forum discussion about the governance change is
that the group of "Users" as a stakeholder feels it is underrepresented
in the PMC. I didn't have the feeling when I saw the list as I consider
Matt and Willy as representatives of the "User" community. But it's also
clear to me that if the community wants this to change, the process is
clear. Find someone who is willing to accept a position in the PMC and
post to this mailing list. I would be willing to initiate a vote so this
person becomes a member of the PMC and is part of the decision process.

Another point I want to make clear is the distinction between "Users"
and "Contributors" in respect to the BOINC project. A "Contributor" is
someone who contributes code, writes documentation or helps other
"Users" with problems. It is not someone who contributes computing time
through BOINC to a scientific project, that is clearly a "User". See the
sections 2.1 and 2.2 in the governance document.

As the discussion in the several forums revolve around the governance
model I would suggest to discuss this first (on the boinc_admin google
group). Please focus on changes to the current model.

MfG / Regards
Christian Beer

I copied over the extended message to Free-DC and the following projects:

SETI@Home
World Community Grid

A for effort, but a C for execution. As I already said in a post in this thread, Seti, Bitcoin Utopia and WCG already had threads on the subject, I even linked to their threads.

We as users are left to make up our mind in absence of any Administartive policy weather we should trust any project and in deed weather they are doing what they are doing is legal and legitimate. The BOINC software and the Berkely administration will not admit to control the use of the software and any Tom, Dick and Henry can start a project because the Management Committe does not care who uses the software and for what purposes.

Time to search out other Scientific project based software issued by other Universities that runs Non BOINC but Sientific projects like Folding and numerous others. Leave BOINC to gamers or any individual who wishes volunteers to donate their computers for unknown reasons.

We have a good Offical Forum to discuss matter relating to BOINC but the management tries to keep us in the dark by running numerous obscure lists and offside group discussion in Google for example.

It is working. 97% of the community said nothing in eleven days. Is it because they do not care or is it because it was intended to be hidden?[/url]

Some clarification seems to be needed here.

[quote]We as users are left to make up our mind in absence of any Administartive policy weather we should trust any project and in deed weather they are doing what they are doing is legal and legitimate. The BOINC software and the Berkely administration will not admit to control the use of the software and any Tom, Dick and Henry can start a project because the Management Committe does not care who uses the software and for what purposes.

BOINC is open source, anyone can create their own project for their own purpose and it is up to them to create a community around their project. Nothing has changed there. You, as a contributor, decide your level of trust and involvement in any BOINC project, always. UCB may stop at endorsing any particular project, but they certainly never controlled any of them. PMC/BMC would act no differently there.

Time to search out other Scientific project based software issued by other Universities that runs Non BOINC but Sientific projects like Folding and numerous others. Leave BOINC to gamers or any individual who wishes volunteers to donate their computers for unknown reasons.

Yup, you possess the absolute freedom to do that, any time you so choose. You always have had that freedom.

We have a good Offical Forum to discuss matter relating to BOINC but the management tries to keep us in the dark by running numerous obscure lists and offside group discussion in Google for example.

I think this criticism is both unfounded and unfair. I have no doubt that this has been an incredibly difficult time for the project team and I believe that they have done what they deemed best, given that the financial rug supporting this project has been pulled out from under them. Google groups is cheap and available internationally and unencumbered by UCB list access/permission policy. What's the better alternative than Google?

It is working. 97% of the community said nothing in eleven days. Is it because they do not care or is it because it was intended to be hidden?[/url]

I suspect that the majority of the community (your 97%) doesn't even need to know and probably wouldn't even notice. They are users. They download a client, connect, crunch, get help from the message boards if necessary. Not many of them interact at the BOINC co-ordinator level. They interact with their project and project administrators. As long as there's a binary download or their repository contains a client, what more do they really need to know? This is one of the intrinsic benefits of BOINC, a simple interface to a highly complex and hidden ecosystem.

The remainder (your 3%) that are discussing this will be sufficiently motivated to engage further, which they are doing and the new Governance structure will accommodate that.

Just a few days ago David was interviewed on UTube and unless I am blind and dumb, I could have sworn that he said that BOINC was created to help in Scientific Research. He never mentioned that anybody including Terrorist Organisation may use it for it is an Open In frastructure Software with no rules. If such thing happens it will not be the fault of the software for BOINC passed responsibility for using to the user neither BOINC or the University of Berkely is responsible for anything in the software or its documentation.

I wish to point out though that to date the BOINC System and that is the Software Component and Documemntation was controlled by one person. There was no clear process of review. There was no community involvement or need to find a consensus of the user. This was a Dictatorial system. Therefore the public was duped.

BOINC's funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation has ended

Prof Stephen Hawking backs venture to listen for aliens

[...]

The £64m ($100m) initiative was launched by the Breakthrough Initiatives group at the Royal Society in London.

[...]

The public will be invited to participate in efforts to find a signal from another world through the SETI@home project.

[...]

Yuri Milner, a high tech US based-billionaire and founder of the initiative said ... "With Breakthrough Listen, we're committed to bringing the Silicon Valley approach to the search for intelligent life in the Universe. Our approach to data will be open and taking advantage of the problem-solving power of social networks."

[...]

Just to repeat, that's $100m headed somewhere in the direction of BOINC.

It follows that if the BOINC platform were to suffer misadventure, this would negatively impact this $100m initiative, which is using the SETI app and therefore depends on the continued operation of the BOINC platform.