Yeah. In the post, I went ahead and made the distinction, simply because I've seen others making the distinction, and because I think there is one, particularly in this case. When you have a UI that people use with varying degrees of success and satisfaction, and then you have a blockchain where the interactions of the UI are being recorded, it seemed appropriate to separate the two.
And when you do separate the two, as I said in the post, it seems like neither Hivemind or SMTs help Steemit, but both could do wonders for STEEM depending on the implementation and ease of use.
It not a matter of "thinking" or finding it "appropriate" to separate the two. They are two distinct entities. Stinc is a company that can't really execute anymore, but could go away and we'd possibly be better off for it. The blockchain is an open source decentralized system owned by no one and everyone all at once.
The only connection is that stinc devotes developer time to BC pull requests, primarily to ensure things go their way, just like shadowy accounts ensure the top 20 are going to be so controlled by the votes that they will most assuredly allow a hard fork such as smt's to proceed, right or wrong, ready or not, IF they can ever actually produce substance from the vapor they exude now. And to ensure they can mostly gate user contributed pull requests in ways that suit them, good for users or not.
I guess I like to finesse words a little. It's kind of what I do. :) I feel the post was actually more to the point, anyway.
Now, would you might explaining something for me. You're like the third our fourth person now who has made a statement similar to:
Would you mind explaining that? Open source is not owned by anyone, but does not each blockchain have some kind of trademarked, proprietary code or technology that actually does belong to someone? Like Steemit Inc.? If they wanted for some reason, to shut down access to the blockchain, wouldn't they be within their rights? What or who would stop them?
Nope, they can't - Like the internet itself, it's designed to literally withstand take-down, EMF bombs, nuclear wars. As long as a copy of the code is running on a machine somewhere on earth, an entire copy of the entire history of the chain is on that machine. It's on ALL our machines. No company owns a blockchain, and no one can make it stop. That's the entire point. Every witness, RPC node and seed node contains an entire copy of the entire history of the chain, any node can be added and its first task is to download ("replay") a copy of the entire thing. Then it attaches to the network and helps process blocks. Take one out, the rest keep on trucking. Take out an entire continent, and the rest keep on trucking.
It's beyond the scope of a comment to teach you how the system you are using here works, but it's not a secret, google is your friend. It's all documented out there since the beginning of the first well known public one - bitcoin - first launched in, um, 2010 I think it was?
A PRIMARY thing to know is, that steemit, inc, is just a company that makes a blogging site, they happen to be the ones that initated this block chain from dan larimer's code base, and kicked it off, but then once running it isn't theirs at all. They literally could go out of business tomorrow (and perhaps, it would be beneficial to the platform in some ways if they did, some might say) but the chain will live on forever.
Stinc is NOT steem. NEVER confuse that. Stinc is an basically an amateur software company. Dan's blockchain code is brilliance. The two are not synonymous in any remote way whatsoever.
Okay. I wasn't equating the one to the other. I've been grasping the idea that they're not the same. And I also understood what you said about how the blockchain is on every RPC and seed node. What I was not seeing was how little control Steemit has over the blockchain, except then you also say they have considerable sway through BC pull requests, and it's obvious they're more or less in line with those shadowy accounts you were talking about keeping the top witnesses in line. So, while no one owns the blockchain, it sounds like there's plenty of folks doing a good job of controlling what happens on it, with or without Steemit Inc's direct involvement.
NOW you smell the stuff we're stepping in...
I'm just now reading through some of the comments. I try not to read other people's comments and posts until I've completed mine. Then I can make sure it's as much my own opinion as possible. I also ended up making the distinction between them. I took it a step further than you and @tim3w4rp did. Heh. I have to take off soon, but looking forward to reading the posts from each of you.
I think you are right, to some extent.
From the lack of due diligence, I've given less credit to Hivemind than I should have. I've stated in my post, that Hivemind is: updates to the UI of Steemit and as such could be helpful to Steemit. I can see now that it is much more than that.
I think that the cornerstone of the winning argument for Hivemind is that creating the tools necessary for developers to easily access the data stored on the blockchain can essentially be helpful to any frontend out there. Not just Steemit. SMTs would do nothing for the ease of use at both sides of the party.
Okay. So, there is a chance that Steemit does benefit from Hivemind because it would make it easier even for the developers who work on Steemit day in and day out to make changes quicker, if I'm understanding what you're saying. And I would agree, from what I think I understand of how Hivemind works, any app, including Steemit will be able to build out and attach to the blockchain quicker and easier.
The question then becomes intent. Is there an actual intent on the part of Steemit Inc. to keep Steemit going? Or is it going to be replaced by Communities through Hivemind? We find out in time.
Yep, that is what I was saying.