Regarding the funding issue, and someone please correct me if I am wrong but the project has been progressing without funding for at least the last year? and if so, it looks like Elastic doesn't really need it for the project to move forward.
I think that two things are mixed up here. The project has no funding because there is nobody to manage any funds. But this doesn't mean that there have been no rewards. I guess that everyone of us has gotten generous gifts, donations, bounties or however you would like to call them. But there is a difference: there are no work contracts, there is no salary, there are no monthly payouts or anything like that. If someone gets something now, he get's it either as a voluntary bounty for past work, or because his horse mask selfie made some rich guy smile for a second and then go wild. Such bounties are NOT a payment for future work.
This essentially means, that everyone of us is willing to work on the project because it makes a shit load of fun - who doesn't like the great feeling after solving something really tough? People here do NOT work because there is a boss paying your salary and making you his own private snitch.
Some have gotten more, some have gotten less, and some are yet to get something maybe. But please understand why the funding discussion is silenced over and over again: nobody is required (or should be forced) to talk about his own funds to anyone else but the lawyer who does his tax reports (yeah, I admit that I pay full income taxes on everything that I get - this cuts everything down by 50% but better be safe than sorry!)
Also: My personal view is that results are mostly better if people are passionate about something that the results of people who are paid to work the "schedule". But this is just my personal opinion. Of course you can find examples in the real life which show the contrary - it's just an observation I have personally made very often.
I think its redundant to mention, that I would never accept any salary from anyone (not even a foundation) ;-) Neither would I accept anyone tracking my work and comparing against some schedules / roadmaps nor accept anyone telling me what to do! And this is the great thing about Elastic's project structure: if someone disagrees with what I do or think, he is free to do it better. Every contribution counts because we are all equal!
I agree with what EK wrote above; however, the one area we may not completely agree is on whether a foundation (or whatever it ultimately gets called) would benefit the project...
We see almost daily questions (between here and slack) requesting who can answer questions about the project, it's direction, marketing, etc. Both EK and I have consistently said we are not interested in providing this project oversight / direction...we simply want to work only on coding the underlying engines. I wish the project could have been a traditional open-source project where people just jump in and contribute how they feel best, but there seems to be a large learning curve with this project that may be a deterrent to people getting involved.
So it seems that there are 2 primary options...1) wait until the compute engine is complete and see if new talented devs outside the crypto world start taking notice and get involved as they identify ways to enhance Elastic to better server their needs, or 2) create a foundation that will fund a couple of key resources to start leading the project, document everything, manage websites / source code repositories, etc.
I believe option 1 will happen on its own, but may take quite a bit of time, and in the mean time we continually get bombarded with people asking the same questions over and over again.
But like EK, I'm not going to be part of running a foundation, nor do I want to be on the payroll of one (the community has already graciously given me quite a bit of xel). So I am just throwing out my thoughts that I do understand the concerns that we see expressed here over and over...but this is really a decision for the community to make (not EK) and the community can act on it if/when they feel they are ready.
PS...regarding BaNgTHai's question above...I too fall under option B...completely incompetent...
