Hi Sebb, I don’t have enough knowledge of this kind of project to have much of an opinion yet about the funding side of things, and I agree with you that funding (and more broadly, the sustainability of the project) is a very important consideration. I hope that by putting our heads together (in a COVID-appropriate fashion, of course 
) we can find ways to get point 1) addressed, regardless of exactly how it can be made to work.
Crispinb: I think you make some fair and valid points. I guess my intention is to use Ruby for Good’s model as a starting point or launching-off point for EfG and some form of inspiration for it, rather than slavishly following their lead. Anyhow, I suspect that the unique selling points of Elixir / BEAM will naturally lend themselves to addressing classes of problems / challenges that Ruby may not have been a great fit for. Assuming this to be the case, EfG would create and occupy a complementary yet somewhat different niche to RfG, even in terms of the type of projects undertaken.If I put on my Walt Disney-style “dreamer” hat (which I do quite a bit ) I could see Elixir’s prowess in processing data streams being useful in projects for folks like seti.org , environmental and climate monitoring, data science and machine learning competitions, etc etc etc.
Anyhow, the questions you’re asking, and especially the ones about ethics, are the kinds of questions that I think that the steering group and the broader EfG community will do well to consider, if this idea gets up - and I’m optimistic that it will. In my view, lpil’s earlier comment rightly pointed towards the idea that we should consider as a guiding criteria the opportunity to make genuinely impactful contributions to whichever group EfG serves / works with, and I think it’s a point well worth highlighting.
K.
