Co-Opetition in the BOINC Community

The paper considers the evolution of software models for the behavior of volunteers in the community of voluntary computing, implemented on the open platform BOINC. It is shown that the original version of the BOINC program was based on the “free market” model. The stagnation of the BOINC project required the development of an alternative “coordinated model” using a software mechanism (“global scheduler”) for selecting and distributing the computing power of volunteers’ digital devices. To overcome the ongoing decline in the number of active projects and active volunteers, a “collaborative model” for organizing the management of BOINC projects is proposed, which is based on the mechanism of co-competition (“co-opetition”).