Just out of interest, who actually writes the codes? I know a lot of witnesses are very technical, but it seems that anyone can set up a witness node and if they get enough votes they could get to top 20. So my question is, do you have to be technical or know programming to be a witness, as lets be honest a lot of people vote for witness because someone asked them to or because they are part of the same community. Can non witnesses help to write the code? And if so, who is responsible to verify their capabilty, to check, test and test their work. I know nothing about witness work and the technical side of things, so this is just laymen question from a normal user that's been caught up in all this.
Ps I personally am enjoying this break, but I wish it was due to another reason and not how the whole HF went.
Nearly all of the code comes from the Steemit, Inc. development team. There are a few other people who submit pull requests via Github, but most of the planned hard fork protocols come from the same company.