With that last bit I wasn't thinking so much of node-running as marketing, running front ends, and so on. The things they've decided maybe they should never have been doing themselves.
There's an interesting discussion of fee-based nodes going on over here at the moment.
Yes I agree with all those others too, and similar comments apply. For example in the case of running front ends, others struggle to get traffic with steemit capturing most of it by default. If they/Steem offered a neutral directory page of third party apps it would be easier for others to compete. Likewise, apps (which could include condenser deployments) that want to try to use a small beneficiary tax as a business model would have an easier time without steemit.com undercutting them (I think they'd still struggle but less so than with the status quo).
Don't worry, I'm consciously off topic, I just wanted to talk about it being here, but I'll read it right away, thank you for sharing.