I do program, in many languages, including c++, and i've been doing it professionally longer than the majority of witnesses have been ALIVE. (I began working professionally in tech in 1985) so I do know what's at stake, and sure, 17 of the top witnesses do in fact make that consensus out of the top 20.
I have yet to encounter any requirement in witnessing that doesn't basically require a pumpkin/freedom vote to get anywhere near making any decisions though, and even then, you gotta be in Ned's not-so-secret super secret slack to be even aware of potential changes. Cause if you didn't ride in here with the bitshares posse or become one of the chosen ones by less than 100 voters after the fact? LOLZ at "need to do anything" but run a box.
Reality, bro. Simple math. You can't get in the top 20 to think about decision making without a blessing, and of those that are up there, I'd venture about 2-5 of them can read c++.
So maybe we should tell users the REAL truth... like you know, you just admitted you hold this criteria up to preclude lesser witnesses in the minds of the people, but you yourself admit you cant currently do. Shit Aggroed can't even work windows very well. Program? Ha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ha. hah ahem.
And many others of the same ilk.
So if you want to talk "truth", Let's count how many witnesses even built from source, again probably fits on 1-2 hands worth of fingers out of 200+ active. You know, those ones that aren't on the top 100 page at all, but do more than half the top 20, in their sleep, for the communities, for the platform and for it's future?
Now call me a sore loser, and tell me I just need to work harder, and ignore the available SP math, how its been distributed since the beginning of time, and please elaborate on how all those top 20 people meet the criteria you and pharesim are laying down here, yourselves included. Because you know it cannot be done.
Sounds more like 2 years in, you guys all thought you could hold this forever, but people came along and started outperforming you all (look at public consensus via VOTE COUNTS, not sp, to see what people REALLY believe in and want for witnesses, not who the rich kids deemed reliable at time to vote for anything STINC wants.)
Dan LEFT because of this shit. His own words from bitcointalk and other sources. Do your own research. It's fact.
I didn't explicitly state the need for certain dev skills I support social witnesses too as long as they have someone on their team to take care of the tech.
Code reviews are important, but I don't expect every witness to do that individually.
Jerry has shown on countless occations that he doesn't care about the community, at least not those parts that can't make him more income. You yourself said in another comment how he paid smaller witnesses, others said similar - in the end it always boils down to vote buying.
And his bullshit videos talking about 10/100/1000000$ steem in the future are not the kind of marketing i'd regard as healthy. Wonder about low retention rate? Check the expectations that are given to new users...
He empowered smaller witnesses to stay in the game, as I understand it, this did not require a vote back, in fact, one recipient I know is actually quite anti-jerry, but still met the criteria and got the funds. So that argument is invalid.
If we need more funds for smaller witnesses that's something to be decided on in the code (or maybe witness parameters?), but it's not a responsibility of other witnesses. And it doesn't help the general community a bit to give handouts.
There may be exceptions, but in the general picture it's obvious that all "support" coming from him is pure marketing, either for himself or to pump steem.
Extending this to include the reply to your other comment: Of course nobody is forced to vote for him. That'd be stupid, bribes don't include threats. Although there are several cases where he withdrew support after being unvoted.
Ha, this POST Is pure marketing, a total publicity stunt, seeing as you believe you get to decide who is responsible for what, I've just decided this is a stunt, which it is, since voting is a private decision and you just had to self aggrandize your virtue signalling. Meh lame.