There is no creative accounting, nor tax avoidance. We have creditors because we took on seed investment and loans to exist. This is totally normal for a tech startup.

It's also quite normal for a startup to make no profits for its first few years. Indeed, it's normal for most startups to fail.

When we began, nobody got paid. I was on zero wages for the first two years and less than minimum wage for the next three. This has been a very hard and unrewarding mission: to bring millions of completely non-techie users to BOINC, by incentivising them with other means (supporting charity and the prizes). It has also meant finding paying customers to keep the whole thing running.

Our users don't care two hoots about BOINC, or science, or computing. That's the whole point of it, we appeal to entirely non-techies who wouldn't otherwise participate in BOINC in a million years. They're all new to it, the silent majority. That's also why our forums aren't nearly as busy as regular BOINC groups: they're not remotely interested. Our adverts specifically emphasise 'it's all automatic, you never have to lift a finger again after installing', etc.

We use many different types of online ads, and yes we use bundling too, so long as it is strictly opt IN. We have never used opt out, ever (Opt out is far more efficient, too. It costs us extra to do it the most ethical way.)

"This means they could decide not to pay anything to charities or users and still be honest, this in my opinion is intentionally misleading"

And yet we do exactly the opposite. We have been paying donations and prizes even when under no obligation to. You even noticed that yourself. How is that anything but a plus?

We have a 27 page ethical policy that was written by one of our partners (who can all see our books on request). We apply strict KYC/AML rules to all customers, and we turn more away than we accept. And in the end, we now have over half a million new machines running BOINC, constantly donating vast amounts of processing to science that, without us, simply wouldn't be there.

You can call us inefficient, pipe dreamers, whatever. But we are 100% ethical.