Ok.  I'm just going to answer everything at once.

I probably didn't describe this perfectly, but I was referring to a 
service that would NOT try to make a profit.
I was actually considering the lowest possible amount required for 
something like this.  I will now modify this
proposal to expand it to the general community (as I was actually 
intending :) ):

Is their enough people in the RoR community who would like such a 
service that they all wouldn't mind getting
together and renting space on some larger server?


I'm guessing probably not, but it never hurts to ask.

-Shalev