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DOCUMENTATION DISCUSSIONS FILE ROOM
Boinc vs Grid Republic

Boinc vs Grid Republic

 
ID: 87133
Posts: 1

If Boinc is the management, creator, and maintenance of this distributed computing network, what does Grid Republic do? 

It seems redundant?

Does Grid Republic manage what projects are allowed to use Boinc?

Why doesn't Boinc do that function?

Can Boinc run projects w/o Grid Republic's permission?

Russ Kelly 

ID: 15261
Posts: 141

Hi russ,

Great questions and I have your answers on GridRepublic VS BOINC.

First off GridRepublic and BOINC overlap to a great extent.  GridRepublic builds upon the BOINC software to extend the management, discovery, and recruitment to a single point on the web.  GridRepublic extends across projects acting independently from the projects promoting each eaqually.  GridRepublic collaborate with the BOINC team for development and advisement.

GridRepublic looks for ways of simplifying the joining, management, outreach, and discovery for projects and new participants.

Some unique points of GridRepublic:

  • Integration with Facebook via the Progress Thru Processors app to help attract more people to volunteer computing.
  • Streamlining the joining process for projects - create one account at GridRepublic and each new project is a simple click join to add to any number of computers.  This also allows the signup and autoattachment when installing via the web.
We have many other ideas for development of recruitment tools, project discovery, partnerships and various other extentions of BOINC which our web based design affords over BOINC software alone.
 
How does GridRepublic Manage what projects are allowed to use the BOINC software?  GridRepublic acts as the official term "account manager" GridRepublic actually pioneered this concept for BOINC.  In the current design we act like a relay to the various projects.  Meaning settings that are changed here also are reflected at the project site.  When you join a project we create accounts at those projects on your behalf.  You are free to join/leave GridRepublic and retain control of those accounts as they are created in association with your email address as though you joined each site individually.  (though easier with one click on GridRepublic)

Why hasn't BOINC done all the above?  The BOINC team's interest is mainly on devleopment of the best platform possible (NSF funded research project) and building a community around BOINC for adoption.  

GridRepublic is one such group of persons who took it upon themselves to help expand BOINC's adoption and impact.  Other approaches are those of the individual projects and teams.  We would like to help bring tools to assist all of these groups to recruit better with our main focus on recruiting new users who generally would not have known about BOINC or thought it too technical.  Our approach is more centralized and collaborative focused in a markeplace type presentation to help cross project awareness and establish trust through partnerships.

Can BOINC run projects without GridRepublic's permissions? If I interpreted this correctly.  Yes, you can add projects not listed on GridRepublic independently.  We do not restrict what projects run on your machine. (users retain control) The only difference is the manually added projects don't show up on GridRepublic, but if they appear as a possible add in our project list then a simple add will link your accounts and disply.

We periodically update our project list to add the new projects and retire completed or inactive projects. (we are long over due for an update)

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