I just checked out the 17.1 release message on github. I will be upgrading my nodes to it, I think these are good changes - they are not consensus-based either so they will go into operation directly.

I am mostly in rest mode at the moment, my travels were quite exhausting. But I am working on getting a running witness on a docker base with gentoo inside it, it's not a difficult task and slow so it suits how my brain is working at the moment.

Oh, also, today a release 17.1 appeared. It has no consensus-related changes but a few good little things and probably more things that are just fixes, the gentoo docker I am making will be building 17.1 and I will be releasing it on github once it's done.

Seems this is the second-last depth of comment I can make so I will address https://steemit.com/witness/@patelincho/re-l0k1-re-gutzofter-re-l0k1-re-gutzofter-re-beanz-re-gutzofter-today-i-m-reviewing-my-witness-votes-for-hf17-20170325t182620570z

In fact, a split reward pool does not disadvantage the big whales, they just switch to voting some part to comments. The compounding of whale SP on votes is something that is more important that we eliminate. The differential is so big that you can round the effect of minnows and dolphins down to zero. Curation is a skill that is like entrepreneurship - basically seeing the future. It should not matter how much capital base you have, what matters should be that you vote ahead of a big pack. The whales having so much power that makes the rest of the users irrelevant works against the purpose of having a curation reward altogether, and works in effect as a way for whales to get more interest on their SP. They don't have anything to lose and they don't have to actually pick articles that people end up voting for in the hundreds. They just vote, and they get rewards. This is wrong and contrary to the stated objectives.