So can you, you know. Please reassure us.

Here's the meat of the reply I received when I contacted Oxford re this closure:


Personally, I see UD's attitude as extremely unprofessional as it seems that not even the clients were aware of the impending actions. Recorded in my little book of organisations never to deal with in the future - which may be a mere token, but as we all know in grid-computing, every little bit IS significant.

Meanwhile, awaiting promised page and crunching away as usual in an atypically wet and chilly Perth (and do we need the rain or what?)

This may be of interest - t was published on another forum (not Grid) by one of their Mods, just over a year ago -

There are some things that we UD members need to deal with.

Fact: Things at UD are not the same as they were in the past... from the top banana on down.

Fact: Believe it or not... whether we wish it were so or not... grid.org is not the mainstay of United Devices. It never was. The cancer project is a charitable donation of time and resources by UD. Like any company who sponsors a charitable enterprise, from the local kids' baseball/football teams to the Red Cross, said company only gives what it can afford. The employees are not expected to allow their real jobs/work to suffer on account of the charitable work. Since Ayer was fired, there has not been an employee who sole job was grid.org... nor one whose *main* job was grid.org. The cancer project is just a *small* part of the job.

Fact: Paul is gone. Yes, we loved (and still do love) him. Gone are the days of Paul hand-holding grid.org. And I do mean hand-holding. As you have heard, the equipment is antiquated. Paul held it together with spit and wire. Paul went way above the call of duty for grid.org... more than he should have. Some might be surprised at how many nights (1am, 2am, and even 3am) he was working on grid.org related things.

Fact: Robby was thrown to us sharks with no training what-so-ever. God bless his soul, he *is* trying and he *is* learning.

My opinion: We have to give Robby a chance. I liken him to an accountant who was handed the job of printing the brochures for all upcoming charitable events... not his area of expertise, but now he has to learn about the world of publishing.

My opinion: But things have a way of working out for the best. Paul begged and pleaded and requested newer equipment. Denied, denied, denied. Why should they? Paul kept it going. Because Robby doesn't have the training to hold it together, the old machines are starting to die. This forced UD's hand. They had to order new stuff if they wanted to keep Ed's baby. (Some of you oldies may remember Ed Hubbard... former President & CEO of UD.) And they do want to keep grid.org going. Like all companies, big and small, their charitable contributions look good, not only on paper, but to woo future customers.

Scribe's post above seems to show that the writing has been on the wall for some time.

I started crunching 2 years ago. A list of links for "Interesting Things" on my ISP's webpage led me to Grid.org, run by United Devices, with some sort of partnership with IBM. I did sign up, but when I read further on their webpage, they said that while the projects at Grid.Org would continue, those new to crunching and not already members, might be better to join "World Community Grid" (possibly at least for the HPF project - my memory is hazy), which was a larger and upcoming entity and also sponsored by IBM. I took their advice and joined WCG.

So here I am. At first I used the WCG dedicated client, but later switched to BOINC. This enabled me to take advantage of dual core processors, and also led me to crunch for a few other worthy projects (non WCG). So you see, crunching evolves. I am now independant of WCG, and if they pulled the plug, I would have many other options to donate to humanitarian, not for profit causes. As Grid.Org pointed out, the concept of Public Grid Computing is well established.

Of course Grid.Org could have handled the closedown a little more gracefully. I think here they were bogged down in "Corporate think". They treated it like the closure of a division of a commercial company. The difference here is that the highly dedicated "workforce" is unpaid!
Not being subject to the glare of commercial matters, they could have started a gradual scaledown months ago, and aimed closure to coincide with some sort of project completion. Hopefully, none of the project work is wasted. I hope that if WCG ever made a decision to close down, that they will treat their "staff" with a little more courtesy.

Welcome to everyone coming across from Grid.Org

Should have been put out of it's misery 18 months ago instead of being left in terminal decline on life support.

I just hope everyone finds a new project to suit their needs, rather than giving up on dc.