Steemit 2017 Roadmap

in #steemit8 years ago

Dear Friends,

Please enjoy reviewing what Steemit has planned for 2017 development. We look forward to an amazing year of social media and blockchain transformation with you.

https://steem.io/2017roadmap.pdf

We welcome your comments and feedback below.

Steem on,

Ned & Dan

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We will be providing more detail on the Blockchain roadmap in a followup post. We recognize that the multi-chain fabric concept is not fully described in this roadmap.

Looking forward to it!

Likewise!

the multi-chain fabric part was my favorite! It reminds me of the organic world meeting the virtual one. Impressive.

Reading about the fabric made me feel like I was in on something transformative

8 month old comments rule!

Really looking forward to this.

Exciting !

For those lazy one's - one click less :)

part from attached PDF:

PS. I offer 5 SBD BOUNTY for someone who will translate this TL;DR; to Spanish

Anyone want to make a bounty for other language versions? Translated version of this document can be very useful for other media :)

The russian translation is being worked by @rusteemitblog. :-)

Steemit.com


• Migración de todos los servicios a una infraestructura autoescalable y autoreparable.
• Implementación de útiles microservicios para desarrolladores internos y externos, facilitando el desarrollo de aplicaciones.
• "Baterías Incluidas": Servicio de Endpoint de alta disponibilidad para una rápida integración de desarrolladores tercerizados.
• ética de propósito, Diseño razonable.
• Servicio de sesiones de Steem para fácil integración de aplicaciones tercerizadas.
• Rebranding: Nuevo logo, colores, isotipo para distinguir a la aplicación social del blockchain.
• UI: Revisión del lenguaje de diseño para todas las aplicaciones de usuario.
• Apps: Estamos desarrollando aplicaciónes para iOS y Android.
• Prestaciones: Alojamiento de imagenes.
• Prestaciones: Poder de moderación de comentarios para el autor del post.
• Prestaciones: Comunidades asignables y moderación.
• Prestaciones: Nuevo tutorial para usuarios.
• Prestaciones: Logros e Insignia de Usuario.
• Prestaciones: Notificaciones en el teléfono.
• Prestaciones: Barra de estado de fácil lectura.
• Prestaciones: Galletas gratis para todos.


Blochchain de Steem

• steem.io: Una plataforma con tablero visual para visualizar el estado del Blockchain de Steem.
• Librerías oficiales de soporte en JavaScript y Python.
• Prestaciones: Gran reducción del costo de creación de cuentas, y menos spam.
• Prestaciones: Separación arbitraria de las recompensas de publicaciones, división de ganancias.
• Escalabilidad: El futuro es paralelo. (que es esto? el oráculo de matrix?)

Steem Inc.

• Descentralización física: Un equipo global con base de operaciones en Internet.
• Comunicación interna a la velocidad de Internet.
• Pueba y compilación automática de todos los códigos, con simple despliegue de un solo comando para reducir los tiempos de producción de futuros cambios, permitiendo a los desarrolladores enfocarse en... desarrollar.
• Estamos contratando los mejores talentos a nivel mundial.
• Planeamos descentralizar los fondos de la cuenta @steemit .
• Todos nuestros programas van a seguir siendo programas (como en, libertad) de libre uso.

• Prestaciones: Galletas gratis para todos.

LMAO! Nice little addition, there! I can't stop laughing.

El futuro es paralelo. (que es esto? el oráculo de matrix?)

Still stumped by that sentence...

Well, at least SOMEONE read it!

Haha I'm here to help.

Whole TL;DR; section translated into Polish with special care you can find on our account :)

https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemit-polska/mapa-drogowa-steemit-na-rok-2017

I'll traslate it to spanish

Loading...

please read whole roadmap first, to grasp whole vision for upcoming year :)

Done! pretty cool

I'll pass the news in our channel hispanohablantes, I'm sure some will do it

any bounty for Brazilian portuguese translation? if yes let me know and reserve it, can do it by tomorrow ;)

My favorite part:

Steem Login and signing service for safe and easy third-party app integrations.

I really hope they go with something like OAuth 2.0 and make it super easy and secure. Ideally, like other integrated sign ins, users should be able to see all the applications they've granted access to and easily revoke access at any time. There are too many integrations right now which ask for posting keys and that's not a good process going forward.

but problem is... that this is planned for Q3.

This is needed earlier! This should have greater priority.

The work is not instantaneous. We are working on it now. You can expect it live by Q3.

don't get me wrong. This is very important functionality and rushing on its development would not be very wise. Any error in this service can lead to some serious hack.

Nevertheless, for example if I had a choice to speed up a work on "SteemLogin", by giving up a possibility of having "iOS and Android Mobile Applications" in Q4, I would prefer to have "SteemLogin" earlier. Why because we already have working eSteem, and in a year from know it will be even better.

It goes without saying, that having SteemLogin implemented earlier will help all developers.

So by working on SteemLogin rather sooner than later, you will help us, help You :)

We expect mobile applications to be the vast majority of the usage of our site in the future. To deprioritize them in any way (imagine if we didn't have a website) is, in our view, a mistake.

They are very nearly our top priority. Native mobile applications also offer a lot of huge benefits around key management, too.

Some time ago I thought about key management with mobile devices. There is one great advanage about smartphones - they are in most cases online more offten than Desktop of avarage user.

Steemit cannot store keys on own server. At the beggining key is only stored by browser and in the backup (hopfuly).

I am wandering how SteemLogin would work, because without a key from user, transaction cannot be signed. Therefore, SteemLogin will be able to sign transactions for my only when my browser/application will be online.

But what if I trust my wife, sister, and mom enough to give them my keys? They could install SteemApp/SteemLogin app on their smartphones, and whenever there will be a transaction in the queqe awaiting for singing, then someone else could authorize this transaction for me.

With 3-4 trusted friends, I would have vary high availbility of my keys, which will be ready to sign transactions for me.

Moreover... I could even pay them some fee for signing transaction for me. Their smartphone work for me, so they could have a additionall possibility of earning money.

Of course as a pro-user I would also like to setup SteemLoginAgent on my remote server, but this is something would typical user will not able to do that. I would be much easier to avarage user to setup a mobile app to sign transactions for friends.

Hmm. I missed that. Yeah, would be great to have it much sooner than that.

I love it man!

Very cool overall! I am not a fan of communities but I know human nature desires it. Please roll out the new logo for Steemit.com soon so that I can use it across the social media channels.

This is very impressive and gives me great confidence. I think it's time for all of us to quit warring and get behind this work. It will take all our energies, I think, to really make a big impact. The amount of detail in this was inspiring. It's time to get to work. Thanks Ned and Dan. This blew my expectations out the window. And I am a huge fan of the communities idea, so I was very happy to see that as part of the future. I hope to move the Choose Yourself Facebook group (or at least help with that initiative) to Steemit. I'm excited about this.

So just wondering what is happening latest post was 7 months ago, whitepaper out of date. Http://steem.io gives old info.
Faq. mentions steem, is not an investment. I think it is now?

What are we trying to achieve here? If so much talent is being attracted, get someone less talented to make sure the website details are up to date.

Thousands of people are now probably powering up still thinking their money is stuck for 104 days... like I did.
Unless you dig deeper and trust me that takes weeks u find out that the info is outdated.

How can this happen, how does one create such a brilliant functioning System and then get the easy things so wrong?

Sorry for being critical but I put money on you guys and I am getting a bit worried about what is going on here.

It is a common thing in open-source projects to progress the software past the original documentation. Everyone loves to code, but no-one wants to update the documentation.

that is true, but it is less common for people to invest in open source and if people do invest they should be made aware of the fact that the whitepaper is out of date.

I have spoken to many investors that were not up to date of the latest hardfork updates. People putting their hard earned money in on info that is incorrect, besides it is not much fun reading 44 pages of technical info and trying to make sense of the figures, when it then turns out it is old info.

Apparently it is writtensomewhere in the faq. that the whitepaper is out of date, good luck finding that out.

I think just accepting that it is the way it is, feels like things are not been taking seriously.

I guess it is how open source works?

I just reported @jones420 to @steemcleaners for running bots to make his little scheme work. I would be interested to see if they are doing anything about this.

So much good stuff. I particularly like the encouragement of autonomy as a value, with the addition of self moderating communities and self moderated posts. That makes everyone responsible for keeping their own space clean and tidy.

Impressive road map full of game changing features like the third-party app signing service that was sorely needed, the smartphone apps and the ability for posters to moderate the comment section of their own posts. Looks like Steemit is going to negociate successfully that tricky bend after all. I'm going to have to put back some more Steem in my daily regimen going forward.

Meanwhile Synereo shot themselves in the foot and is pretty much dead. Reddit has lost a large number of their more enlightened users due to their reckless censorship of #pizzagate and other sensitive subjects. Twitter and Facebook have shown their true colors by supporting the #fakenews propaganda. There is a huge need for a censorship resistant and brutally ethical social network owned and controlled by its users. The market is ready for that now, and is there for Steem to seize.

That being said, there is still one major thing missing to the roadmap: a rework of the content lifecycle. Currently, content becomes almost impossible to find from the frontpage past 24h and comments are disabled after a month. This prevents Steemit from acting as a drop in replacement to Reddit and acquiring all the disgruntled users sickened by Reddit's censorship.

I think changing the content lifecycle and offering another separate UI view (possibly under another domain name) that would look more like Reddit or Voat who do a great deal to encourage users to do the transition.

That being said, there is still one major thing missing to the roadmap: a rework of the content lifecycle. Currently, content becomes almost impossible to find from the frontpage past 24h and comments are disabled after a month.

This was already addressed in the HF17 proposal. At least the start of it; as you say UI work is also needed.

I am reading the roadmap, thank you for publishing it.

In terms of the moderation that hides comments and posts, can you perhaps add some type of OPT IN to an account that let's them see all comments and posts without having them hidden. Myself and those technically inclined can explore the blockchain and see what is there and technically not be censored, but that does not describe the average user. So without a way for the average user to decide to view everything as visible to them it will effectively be the same as censorship, because they will have no way of seeing what was censored.

So it would be nice if there was a way to do like a SHOW ALL toggle.

EDIT: Perhaps something like a little black/white/grayscale icon of an eye or something that could be clicked on to show all hidden content for a specific post, and perhaps same thing for the feeds.

Interesting idea. The more autonomy the author has over his space, the greater will be his sense of attachment to it. I would think even a toggle should be conditional upon the authors vision for that space.

Really I think about it like this. I know it truly is uncensored as it is on the blockchain. I even know steps I can take to go view the blockchain. Yet, if I need to do those steps am I likely to even bother?

Then there are the majority of people that would not be comfortable doing those steps, so effectively it is no different to them than Reddit, Facebook, etc hiding something at the database level. They will have no clue how to access it, and likely no inclination to learn, so it is effectively censorship from their perspective.

If there is an easy way that anyone can toggle a full view then that negates that concern. Without such a thing it is possible you may not even know comments were hidden that you might have been interested in. So without knowing, how will you know that you should look at the blockchain.

I believe the censorship free aspect of steemit/steem is a critical part of its attractiveness. I'd like to make sure people do not begin using and then due to hiding decide it was a "lie" and get very vocal. I've noticed negative attention often spreads faster and more out of control than positive.

Do 10 positive things and all it takes is 1 negative thing and some people will focus on that negative.

EDIT: What would be REALLY nice is if the icon to REVEAL hidden items only showed up when there was something hidden on that post. So the presence of the icon itself would be all that would be needed to let you know that things had been hidden/moderated. If the icon was not present then you would know that you are looking at the unmoderated FULL data related to the posts/comments.

They will have no clue how to access it, and likely no inclination to learn, so it is effectively censorship from their perspective

By that logic, facebook is effectively censoring twitter, because you can't read tweets on facebook.com.

We think authors should get to choose what comments, if any, appear below their posts on steemit.com—full stop. It's not censorship because several other sites will choose to publish those comments. Anyone who wants to read them can view them elsewhere.

I would suggest that this feature be optional and presence or absence of this moderation be clearly displayed at the post or community level so people can be so informed when they choose whether to participate in that particular discussion (or even, perhaps more importantly, when reading it)

Yep that is basically what I was getting at. The presence of a simple icon could reveal that. Though I believe being able to click on it to view what was hidden is important. Ideally people shouldn't have to leave steemit to search for what was on the block chain.

Use of our website to access the Steem Blockchain is 100% optional. It is likely that other sites will have different opinions about what moderation opinions to heed.

Ours is not to be a neutral site, but a slightly opinionated one. There will be block explorers for people who want to see all the data. We are building a very specific environment for social interactions.

Anyone who wants to read them can view them elsewhere.

You are projecting your abilities and desires upon "everyone".

"Anyone" who wants to read them can read them. That is a false statement.

Anyone with the technical ability, or willingness to learn how can read them.

Just like anyone could technically file a Freedom of Information Act request and supposedly get the information they want. This is an extreme example as it is far more difficult and slow to get a response, and it may be redacted all over the place. Yet it shows that ANYONE can submit a FOIA request.

If there are barriers then the perception can be of censorship.

If you note my original comment you responded to I carefully chose that word "perception".

You can argue that they were not censored all you want. That won't stop the average person from saying they were censored and that negative press spreading all over the place.

My proposal is to make it so there is something built into the platform that makes your statement TRUE.

"Anyone who wants to read them can view them elsewhere."

The difference is I don't believe elsewhere is necessary. If there were an unobtrusive icon telling you that this post had hidden elements, then WHY would it be bad if that user decided to click that icon to see what they were?

You would still get to show what YOU WANTED. The difference is you are no longer expecting people to jump through hoops to look at what was hidden. The default is hidden, yet you've made the ability to see what was hidden something ANYONE can do, and not simply certain people technically inclined.

If a user can access our website, they can access other websites. This is not an unreasonable assumption.

Filing a FOIA request and navigating to a different page are not comparable.

We intend to provide a specific type of experience for our users, and that involves encoding some of our opinions into the product. Of course, the whole thing is open source and we hope people take the code and run it on many other domains with their opinions supported.

Ultimately due to the nature of the blockchain it becomes impossible for us to censor anything, and we are going to take full advantage of that to provide strong moderation tools on steemit.com for a censorship-free, yet enjoyable reading experience.

That won't stop the average person from saying they were censored and that negative press spreading all over the place.

I think I can speak for most of the team when I say that we welcome lots and lots of negative press accusing us of "censorship". It's laugh-test inaccurate, and is free promotion. 😝

I disagree with you... I think @dwinblood described a elegant and very simple solution

You could create a platform-level or GUI-level per-user setting to prefer seeing censored comments in posts, and just disallow replies and collapse / grey them out in the UI. It might discourage fraudulent posting.

Replying to your nested reply, I think you missed my point. As the original post author or community creator I would like to be able to commit to visitors and readers that I have irrevocably waived my moderation rights, and have that commitment displayed on the web site. In doing so I can differentiate myself from those who are unwilling to accept unmoderated replies, feedback, and independent input, including critical or contrary views.

Why require that this feature be enabled for authors who explicitly do not want it?

You keep saying "the web site" as if steemit.com is the only window to this content. It's not.

There are certain types of content (an example being the encouragement or promotion of pedophilia, or posts promoting violence against minorities) that we will never permit to be displayed on steemit.com, regardless of one's settings.

You can of course expect a post about this and full transparency regarding our decisions at such time deploying our already-drafted policy becomes necessary. I hope that we as a community can forestall that day as long as possible.

We also hope that once we've shipped the communities feature, with the associated blockchain-based advisory moderation, that we will expand that to all users and all posts, allowing anyone to publish their moderation opinions into the blockchain, allowing anyone else to subscribe to their opinions to filter the site based on the set of opinions they choose to apply. That is a reader preference, and if a reader decides to subscribe to the moderation opinions of @someterribleperson, if they decide a user or community is garbage and should be perma-muted, any readers that subscribe to them would then have those posts hidden.

It's at least 6-12 months away before we tackle such things, though, so there will be plenty of time for input from users during the process. In the short term, the deployment of communities will give us useful real-world data on the social dynamics created as a result of such a model.

You keep saying "the web site" as if steemit.com is the only window to this content. It's not.

No, I said "the web site" because I was giving feedback (on the roadmap, which covers, among other things, the web site) and a suggestion for the web site. (Also, to the extent that the feature incorporates blockchain-enforced features, that as well, but I don't know exactly how it will work.)

Now please reread my comment with that intent in mind. It is perfectly reasonable that the developers of the web site have different ideas about how it should work and may decline to act on my suggestion, but my suggestion is a perfectly reasonable one based on the premise of censorship-resistance and (optionally) uncensored discussions (meaning uncensored by the author, not the site operator) being a value-add for the greater ecosystem including the steemit.com web site.

There are certain types of content (an example being the encouragement or promotion of pedophilia, or posts promoting violence against minorities) that we will never permit to be displayed on steemit.com, regardless of one's settings.

This has nothing to do with the author- or subcommunity moderator-based moderation feature. You won't allow it whether or not the author wants it.

I also well understand the distinction between a reader preference and otherwise. I am making a different suggestion, that author or subcommunity creator be able to visibly, verifiably, and irrevocably waive their ability to publish moderation advice that will be disseminated to readers via the blockchain and/or website using the feature. A small amount of thought will reveal the utility in this and why it is distinct from a reader preference.

It's at least 6-12 months away before we tackle such things, though, so there will be plenty of time for input from users during the process. In the short term, the deployment of communities will give us useful real-world data on the social dynamics created as a result of such a model.

Good approach

All of the moderation features will be purely UI/data layer. No censorship will ever be enforced at the blockchain/consensus layer (short of the bandwidth constraints based on block size pressure, which are old hat).

100% agree and the solution you provide is KISS approved :)

The Comment moderation for post authors & Community Namespaces and Moderation features can very easily lead to the creation of echo-chambers.

Sure unless there is an easy way to tell it was MODERATED and with a simple click reveal all the hidden material. I wrote a follow up post about this that was inspired by this discussion.

Yes, because then what's the point of being censorship resistant?
I mean, all posts, including comments, are already moderated by the votes and flags.
If the OP wants to hide a comment all they have to do is try to take it below $0.00

That is a very nice idea!

Great idea! :-)

Very good 22 pages of read. A lot about the further development of steemit, very good.

  • I was surprised to not see revenues being mentioned in the roadmap, or maybe that is for next years roadmap?

All in all, I believe we are in a good boat together and will sail fine through all kinds of water :) Good Job @ned & @dan and everyone who has come with input along the way.

Let us go to the future!

All of our software will remain free (as in freedom) software.

The blockchain software does not allow the freedom for people to modify by creating forks without obtaining written permission from Steemit Inc. It is perhaps ambiguous whether or not this means that the community or an alternate successor developer can not implement hard or soft forks that witnesses may adopt (as opposed to entirely new chains).

If you going to claim that your software is free (freedom) and that you intend for your software to "remain" free (freedom), please restore this freedom to modify and use without restriction or permission. That is contrary to the core principles of free (freedom) software. Otherwise, as the developer of the software Steemit Inc. is perfectly within its rights to release the software as proprietary and usage-restricted but source-available software, but should ensure that this distinction is clear and not described misleadingly (for example in a highly-visible roadmap document)

Failing to adjust the license greatly disadvantages the blockchain relative to other true free open source blockchains in that it remains dependent on the unique central authority of a single named developer (at least to the extent that forks may be needed in the future, which is likely).

The relative advantanges and disadvantages of being able to create entirely new chains by forking the code base is more controversial, but even that restriction is inconsistent with the idea of free software encompassing the freedom to use and modify without written permission from a specific named party. At a minimum it is misleading to describe it as free (freedom) software without making clear that its use and modification is so restricted.

Good point. The Steem blockchain code license is not free/libre and the steemit.com code license is MIT and thus free/libre.

https://github.com/steemit/steem/blob/master/LICENSE.md
https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/blob/master/doc/LICENSE.md

I completely understand why the blockchain license is not free and am generally in favor of it, but words should be chosen carefully so not to cause confusion.

Again without getting into the debate on whether being free open source software is a good or bad thing for the blockchain, the writer(s) of the roadmap (from which I quoted) saw a need to make the claim of free (freedom) software at least twice. Therefore it was seen as important and as such it is important that a claim seen as important not be a misleading one, which in this case, it is.

Agree that the steemit.com code is indeed legitimately free open source software.

I completely understand why the blockchain license is not free and am generally in favor of it, but words should be chosen carefully so not to cause confusion.

Agree. The way they said it is a bit misleading.
However the code should remain licensed, if anyone can just fork the code, then people will just create a coin with a fair distribution, and developers will move to other chains instead of trying to solve the problems in this chain. Also investors have bought in with this license in mind to protect their investment.

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument. I disagree with it being falsely advertised as free software.

However, at a minimum I do believe that provisions should be made for: a) the stakeholders to be able to "fire" Steemit Inc. and hire a different developer or developers (I'm not suggesting this is realistic or desired now, instead I am considering the future); and b) the stakeholders to be able to continue to develop and maintain the software at all (including any necessary hard or soft forks) should Steemit Inc. cease doing so for whatever reason.

Failing to recognize that free software allows this and the current non-free license does not, and failing to remedy this flaw means that the value of the blockchain is impaired. Investors discount future possibilities and the possibility that Steemit Inc. as an entity could be someday be corrupted, coopted, or otherwise fail to act in the interests of the stakeholders, or that the code could be thrown in a sort of legal limbo as abandonware are perhaps-small but looming storm clouds with respect to the value of the token, and notably clouds that don't threaten other competing free-software blockchains.

Interesting I didn't think about this. What you say is that the license prevents even steem to fork if steemit inc disagree ? If this is the case then the license should definetely be removed at some points when steem has gained enough momentum/adoption.

It is somewhat ambiguous how it would apply in that situation, but at a minimum when it comes to being left in legal limbo that is not a good thing.

I don't think a written permission is needed to fork, but it should meet declared conditions.

Copyright (c) 2016 Steemit, Inc., and contributors.

The following license applies to code contained within this repository that is created by Steemit, Inc. Other copy right holders have licensed dependencis such as Graphene, FC, and Boost under their own individual licenses.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
The currency symbols, 'STEEM' and 'SBD' are not changed and no new currency symbols are added.
The STEEMIT_INIT_PUBLIC_KEY_STR is not changed from STM8GC13uCZbP44HzMLV6zPZGwVQ8Nt4Kji8PapsPiNq1BK153XTX, and the software is not modified in any way that would bypass the need for the coresponding private to start a new blockchain.
The software is not used with any forks of the Steem blockchain that are not recognized by Steemit, Inc in writing.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The software is not used with any forks of the Steem blockchain that are not recognized by Steemit, Inc in writing

As I mentioned in my original comment it is somewhat debatable whether this applies to hard or soft forks that may be adopted by witnesses, but it became an issue in the past when some independent developers were unwilling to release an alternate version for witnesses voting because it could potentially violate the license. At a minimum some clarification is needed (ideally in the license text itself).

This reasonably clearly prohibits forking the software to "use" with an entirely different blockchain fork as is common for other free open source blockchain projects. Repeating what I said wrote above, the practical advantages or disadvantages of this are debatable and widely debated, but it still contradicts the generally accepted notion of free (freedom) software.

Right. Saying "free" can be misled since it means "free under following rules".

This is not unlike the AGPL. I don't personally agree that the restriction for use only on this Steem Blockchain causes it to be non-free software.

Everyone has freedom to modify as they see fit - except the genesis block. That is not an undue restriction, in our view.

Perhaps it will change in the future, but for now it is our opinion that the steem codebase qualifies fully as "free software" (not just "open source") in the traditional sense.

This is not unlike the AGPL.I don't personally agree that the restriction for use only on this Steem Blockchain causes it to be non-free software.

I don't agree. AGPL places no restriction on the freedom to make unrestricted modifications and especially to use modified versions (including those modifications you make yourself). This is the very essence of the freedom to which free software refers. AGPL requires that if the software is modified and used by others, the modifications (source code) be made available to those who use it. This is a completely and utterly different form of restriction from one on modifying and using yourself, or on certain forms of modification being made at all without permission from a unique named party.

Please refer to Four freedoms.

Steemit's license satisfies only two of the four freedoms.

Alternately you may refer to Debian's desert island test. A castaway on an island would not be permitted to make and use modifications as he sees fit (for example if the requirements of the island required forking the blockchain to better support coconut transactions or perhaps more realistically to allow the software to continue to be used at all given that a majority of stake, presumably external to the island, could not witness blocks produced on the island and therefore the chain would halt) because he would be unable to contact Steemit Inc. to obtain permission or have Steemit Inc. "recognize" his island fork.

There is no reasonable definition of free software by which software which requires permission from a unique designated party to make certain modifications or to use those modifications can be properly described as "free software". It is frankly a bastardization of the term and downright Orwellian to claim that requiring permission from the developer of the software is free software; that is exactly the sort of needing-permission that by its absence defines free software and directly motivated the concept.

Everyone has freedom to modify as they see fit - except the genesis block. That is not an undue restriction, in our view.

Notwithstanding that this restriction itself is contrary to free software by definition, if that is the intent then please clarify this. In the past a situation arose where a non-Steemit developer was unwilling to release a modification which implemented a fork to be voted by witnesses (which did not modify the genesis block).

The restriction on using the software "with forks" of the blockchain unless those forks are recognized in writing by Steemit Inc would seem to apply to hard forks or soft forks that are adopted by witnesses. If it does not this should be made clear in the license.

Great stuff guys, thanks for committing to the roadmap features and publishing it. Let me also join the meme fest:

With the help of some of the world's leading User Experience (UX) designers

Any names? :)

"• Rebranding: new logo, colors, logotype to distinguish the social app from the blockchain. "

If you guys require any graphic works, Animated videos, Logos, Design I'm more than happy to do work for steem

Edit : I have a showreel and have done work for crypto currencies before.

Hey Warren, I am interested in some graphic work for some personal projects, could you hit me up on steemit.chat or share a way to reach out to you to talk?

Cool steemit.chat is perfect! I sent you a message

My reaction is very positive. It has taken me several hours to read this, fully digest the ideas, and understand more from talking to others. I sat down to write a comment, but it became a separate post about the roadmap (I won't spam, but you can click on my blog if you're interested). I think the Communities thing is brilliant and I am glad about the gamification, using the Steemit account to fund development and promotion, and several other great things in here. Terrific job, guys.

Still plans for confidential transactions and balances? @ned @dantheman

It is important that we tackle the scalability challenges first. Also, under the new blockchain model, working on things like these is a lot simpler/safer, so this is laying the groundwork for a ton of additional blockchain features, including confidential transactions.

Good to hear. Thanks for the clarification!

Cool, definitely would be great to see confidential transactions once other priorities are wrapped up. STEEM will be a lot more like real money when we have decent privacy like monero etc.

Hold on Steemians,

Great times are ahead


Steem on!

Boring, conservative and unambitious roadmap. Lacking vision and range. Nothing truly inspiring from the perspective of an investor. It's missing things like confidential transactions, smart contracts, sub-steems (with own tokens), chain based ad network, and encrypted messages.

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I agree that it's not inspiring from an investor viewpoint, which is comical when considering the investors are currently supporting our reward pool.

I do think there's ambition here, but it is definitely lacking. The rest seems like smoke and mirrors to me. Very disappointing and not at all what I was hoping to see.

We will see new lows on the STEEM charts.

I guess that can and should be solved!

Somewhat agree. I think it's ambitious but UNFOCUSED. They need actual DEADLINES to come to market. STEEM keeps going down because STEEMIT is in an endless BETA phase. Guys, decide WHAT YOU ARE! Timing matters!

Wow! We have been (impatiently) waiting for this moment, but the present paper honestly exceeds my expectations. Thank you and congratulations! I suppose you have been working a few hours on it...

I will have to read it some more times to fully take every single detail. But I have already a short questions regarding one of the goals you mentioned:

Our primary short-term goal is to drastically increase the number of weekly signups.

Furthermore you mentioned at the very end of the paper that you intend to hire additional staff around community outreach and audience growth (amoung other fields of competition).
Have any specific marketing activities to pursue that goal been planned already - or better said: are there any plans that you can already talk about? User growth is surely one of THE key goals since its achievement will automatically help to solve other challenges along the way. So I am really happy you are considering to recruit the corresponding expertise. I am sure Virginia won´t be a problem here :-)

Again: thank you! Thanks for the roadmap, and thanks for building this platform. Independently from your future plans, you have already created something outstanding which has brought a lot of value to all of us. Every day.

A rush of happiness is going through my body! The roadmap .. I could not believe my eyes!

Can we change the image in this post to a super-highway?

Maybe something like this:


The road you chose looks a bit bumpy :)

or this...?

just kidding :)

A quick read through - sounds promising. I'd like to see much more details about marketing and outreach efforts to bring in the user growth. I understand that specific initiatives are "in research" but a general direction towards Public relations, marketing and advertising would be great.

I'm concerned that the word "curation" is not even mentioned once. Considering Curation Guilds was the top focus post-Chainbase. (Source: https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-developer-update-graphene-2-0)

I'm most excited by "An Ethos of Deliberate, Reasoned Design". Things need to be far simpler and more elegant - it's a pre-requisite to mass adoption. Not just UX, but also the underlying systems.

Are there any details on the ownership model for communities? I assume they are transferable. Can stakeholders elect or eject community owners?

I think this is a great idea indeed

To enable this, we intend to augment our current tag-based organizational structure for posts
with a new system called “communities”, a special group into which others can post articles.
Two types of communities will exist: communities into which anyone in the world can post
(where community founders (or their delegated moderators) can decide, post-hoc, which
posts to hide from view) or communities in which only community founders’ (or their
delegated authors’) posts will appear.

Looks quite good overall and I can't wait to see some of things mentioned being implemented. Will be exciting to see how this plays out and how Steemit plans on tackling curation, marketing outreach, community building tools and efforts on this front-not just for the current users but the millions we hope you can bring to this platform. I hope that you find the right people to add to your team to help realize these goals. I'm happy to continue supporting our community here as always.

I feel so small after read this. Better go back to my cave.

I like the roadmap very much. I will be more than satisfied if we archive half of what I have read in 2017! And that is in reality my only concern... if they are capable to manage optimal their time and deliver all this, this year! If they do, they will certainly exceed my expectations by far, and I mean it! So a big +5 for the roadmap for now.

I downloaded the above pdf but nothing showed up , theres just a plus sign in the middle on a blank sheet .😊hopefully someone will narrow it down , and give us the highlights ! I dont think i can down load it on my tablet .😊👍

Probably just your .pdf viewer on your tablet, check out @noisy's comment for the TL;DR version. :)

Try right clicking on the link, saving the PDF somewhere and then opening it outside of the browser. Alternatively try another brand of browser and see if the same thing happens. I tend to oscillate between Firefox and Chrome myself.

Running through the roadmap quickly, I am pretty excited about this upcoming year. Of course, I could not understand a good portion of the stuff, but as a writer and user, I am looking forward to new communities thing and increased user-friendliness.
I still believe that it is the main factor which is holding steemit from becoming huge social media platform. Maybe changing the logo and making it easier to understand for any average Joe, will make 2017 a Steemit year.
I might have more feedback whenever I read it, but for now, I like it. Exciting times.

I am excited about all of it..., but communities, I can't wait! Once I can create a cigar community, I will have no problem bringing many active users. Thanks Steem team!

Its going to take me a while to read through this document thoroughly, however what I have seen from my limited initial read was overwhelmingly positive from my perspective. Great job Ned & Dan, you are doing fantastic work here.

I'm really happy about the Gamification, User Onboarding Improvements, and Feature Discoverability.

Illustration: Let's say they add Achievement X. You can only get Achievement X by having more STEEM Power. It might be purely UI. Or it might be a non-essential feature.

You might think this is 100% frivolous, but others do not. It's something users can relate to: Achievement Get

This is awesome! I think you have accomplished putting tears in the eyes of many people - tears of joy, of course.
Thanks for all of your incredible work @ned and @dantheman!

I really can't wait to see how things will turn out. I have full trust in you and the long term vision of this revolutionary project. thanks for all your dedication and hard highly valuable work. All for one and one for all! Namaste :)

As someone who works in Digital Ad/QA Operations and has worked as a contractor, I just want to give credit for the wording used when discussing your global team. "Remote" workers is a term that is isolating and it does indeed create a second tier of interfacing between colleagues. I'm glad Steemit sees the future in this perspective as well. One team, one fight!

Congratulations on getting your head count more than doubled since Jan 2016!

Definitely interested in seeing what develops under "traffic insights"... I'm in ad servers daily setting up campaigns and analyzing reporting and I often wonder about Steemit.

Thanks for giving us a LOT to chew on!

Excellent . Very indepth. Really look forward to the new plans

This is awesome! Fall of 2017 should be an exciting time to watch new users flooding in! Thanks for all your hard work!

this post has seriously made my day, about to write a post about it

I am surprised there is nothing on search. That's the number 1 flaw in my view. It would be nice to see only subjects we want to see. Perhaps the new community pages will fix this but they are also scrubbed by the moderators. I would prefer community pages with no moderators as an option. Most of the rest sounds great. I wonder how fast active users will increase after the rewatd Sharong goes in.

Search is an easy one, with the microservices we have in the works. That will be a side-effect of some other indexing stuff we're building.

Thanks for the hard work and accessibility!

IF you allow them to wall themselves off into bubbles of group think it will be much harder to reach your ultimate goals of freedom and basic rights for all.
Their cognitive dissonance will prevent them from accepting freedom as a replacement for rule by bully.
The bullies have seen to that through many generations.
Absent ideas that make their dissonance ding the status quo prevails.

why the roadmap has not been written simply in steemit post?

Apparently the market do not like it so far ....

Wait the market to catch up....

No, thats normal as the price already has gone up for the past few days in anticipation. So it was already included in these recent price spikes from short traders looking for a quick buck. My GUESS is it will stay fairly stable after the shorters selloff...just a guess though, lol.

Buy the hype, sell the news.

Say whaaaaaaaaaat?
This 2017 roadmap is planned for Q3!!!

Wow this is quite a large document :) going to need a coffee befoee i tackle this one..

Cheers to a great start for steemit and a better 2017.

Thanks guys :)

As do I! Looking forward to read 👍

thank you for joining SPC #24 - roads and paths, but sorry to inform you that this submission is too late for consideration.
ok enough humor ... BRAVO! LOOK FORWARD TO A SPLENDID 2017!! :)

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