If you wanted to build your own front end interface of of hive or steem (or a hybrid) and run ads on it then you could, and you don't have to share the ad revenue with the steem community. It is a public ledger, so the public owns it and each can do what they want with the public data. So long as the data is truly public, there is no reason to fully exclude a public ledger from any project an author wishes since it is public domain.
Anyone can have a copy of steem or hive and do as they wish with it, nothing stops you from being a witness, nothing stops you from having your own customized database of steem transactions for whatever purposes you like. And if you wanted to fork a new chain then you could. And when it comes down to forking a new chain, for what reasons would you fork? You can have your own coins on steem/hive, you can make your own steem/hive interface, the block chain can do far more than just text-but data itself.
Forking a chain could be a side interest, it could be for academic, educational, testing, or engineering purposes, it could be to keep out countries with adverse regulations, or limit it to a private group of people. A new chain gives the option for a new distribution, and this was one of the concerns I raised when Justin sun spoke about an Air drop of steem tron tokens. It needs not be 1 to 1. It could be based upon reputation, number of posts, how well you like someone, it could be 10 coins for every one, or adding a decimal place effectively giving the appearance of dividing the amount of steem by 10, or any mathematical function the author wished. It is a new fork, it is a new creation, it can be seeded and mechanized however the author wishes.
If I wanted it for myself and the 10 friends, or say 1000, or say 1 000 000, or the entire world except ugly bob then the forked chain isn't being made for these excluded people-giving the excluded people a balance is not excluding them. To achieve my forked chain I would be applying a concept that is in mind, and turning that concept into a marketable product. And so that Creation up to that point of a creating a fiduciary duty is mine and mine alone-nothing on it belongs to anyone else. If I determine that it isn't worth going forward, I can shut it off and trash it. No one was harmed, but Justin Sun would be running to the police claiming that I stole his crypto.
It sounds like your argument is that the witnesses should have rolled back before the exchange did the hack, then locked up all of Justin sun's funds again....but the Sybil attack threat still remained not to forget mentioning lost data as well. Doing what they did eliminated the threat completely, an no one was harmed.
Now supposing that someone seeded their forked chain, they got 20 witness servers up and running, and all the accounts that have keys are functioning, that still would not be sufficient to say that someone stole crypto if the network had never been on the internet. But Justin Sun would be running to the police saying that that particular someone stole his crypto.
Testing servers could be seeded and reset many different ways to try to finds bugs that have not surfaced yet. Although I haven't worked with steem/hive testing servers yet, they are up and running and being reset every hour, and any person with an account and RCs and the skills can use it-and I further suppose one could develop a steemit like front end that interacts with the test net so any account with RCs can use it. Yet, when the test servers are reset or re-seeded, no one, except Justin Sun, would run to the police screaming that that particular someone stole his crypto.
I am not going to toy with the exact precision of zeno's paradox to specify when a concept [the hive fork in this case] transmutes into property and fiduciary responsibilities, as it requires more technical expertise than I presently have and there are a minimum of 20 witness servers who may not be in sync to add more complexity to the equations. At a minimum they must be initially seeded as the creators sees fit, they must be out of the initial testing phase, and they must also be online, and there may be additional variance/flexibility based upon any white paper or other binding agreement. And even a plan to go live may initially fail thus killing that instance, and the planned fork goes back into a testing phase.
What you do protest is the initial seeding process-when it is still in a concept stage.
In contrast steem was seeded, and mined about 4 years ago, and has a psuedo proof of stake system they delude themselves calling a proof of brain following an specialized equation for distribution based upon block number and amount of steem vests. They are beyond the testing phase, they been live for 4 years, they are online.
Steem was property, there was a fiduciary duty of Justin Sun, Steemit, and the witnesses to protect that property. Instead they conspired to steal it. Even if you were to argue some "new steem" (the code name of hf23) theory that they destroyed the original chain and sprung up a new forked chain-that theory would still fail. They still had a fiduciary duty to protect the chain itself, and they instead stole users money.
At the present moment, the south korean community are in a blood lust proletariat uprising against the wealthy. There is something going on with China, South Korea, and Japan with a stable coin that has them awfully excited about crypto, and something about "the curve shall save the country". Things I hear briefly about that I haven't read in the news. It is possible they could be scheming to end the era where the dollar is the world reserve currency, but that would be speculation on my part.
For other users with this mentality, I have seen some who are spoilt little brats. Still there may be others who, given our post industrial economy, never produced a product from concept to commercialization. Concepts fail for a multitude of reasons, and it took Thomas Edison 1000 attempts to finally create a functioning light bulb. It takes over 10 years and a billion dollars to bring a product from a petri dish to FDA approval in the United states. Though it requires a bunch of acids, and perhaps bases as well, feel free to go down to the beach and make your own silicon wafer without using any technological product developed in the last 200 years. Then from there, develop a 555 timer out of that silicon wafer without using any technology-other than a multimeter-developed in the last 200 years. Things just don't magically exist, things usually come into existence because there is a need for something.
How many test chain trials do you think hive tried before they went live? How many times did they tested their scripts to try to minimize errors? If things happen as expected the first time-without so much as an off by one error- when doing something complex [without full automation] then you are pretty lucky.
The real steem community needed to get away from Justin Sun and his chicom sellouts, and they built hive to do just that. Under Justin Sun, Steem has certainly became a dumpster fire-and he and his allies had no one to blame except himself. And now, Justin Sun will end up in Prison-if he is lucky.
Thanks for your effort in your long winded reply. Hopefully it was cathartic for you or some others found it of interest as it was not read by me (beeme.icu brought it to my attention). That is because DPoS Governance has proven to be a failure, to me, due to the fact that the whole idea of a world active blockchain is to be a trusted ledger of historical transactions. If that is altered then it has failed in that regard. If one wants to be credible then roll back the clock or start afresh. Otherwise it is a fun thing for you and your (in this case) 10,000 active user friends to use. It is not to be taken seriously as a trusted blockchain. Neither is STEEM at this point if that makes you feel any better.
Just so you know, you are now muted on my end as the delusional rationalisations of hard core HIVE believers is getting tiring to me who is just here to power down, create a dooms day browser extension and move on.
Wishing you all the best. The muting is for my sanity and not meant as an insult to you.