geoffair, first some technical stuff. You must have left the alternate work option selected. The Clean Energy Project is starting slow, so there are times when there is no work (and there is no Mac/Linux work yet, either). World Community Grid sends you other work instead, if you permit it. There's nothing exceptional about this - it's a new project, and teething troubles are par for the course.

Now, who will be making money? With the results in the public domain, anyone can benefit. This includes researchers, pharmaceutical companies - anyone. In the case of drug design projects, it is actually beneficial to allow the big pharmaceutical companies to go ahead and pay for the mind-bogglingly expensive human trials. But, because the basic science is in the public domain, there is little they can patent. Other companies can make generic versions, and get them approved on the fast-track process.

Quite a few of our projects engage in basic science. The results can't be immediately used to effect a cure, but instead can be used by thousands of researchers studying all sorts of diseases.

You were right to be cautious, though. World Community Grid is an exception, but many lesser distributed computing projects are run for profit.

There is no incentive to make progress without profit . You can bet that somebody will make a profit out of solar energy - some are already doing so.
For the last thirty years there has been hardly a roof top in Israel without a solar water heater. Somebody has had to manufacture them, and doubtless there are similar projects throughout the world.

Thanks everyone for the courteous and helpful replies. My concerns proved to be unfounded.

As I do far too often, I got all righteous and fired off that first post before having a good look around the site.

Good luck to BOINC and all who sail in her.

Geoff