The project is open source. "Ned and company" may end up having little to do with Steem success in the long run.

Hive account@dan is a smart guy but he can't just BEEP BOOP BOOP click click and have a fully functional blogging platform deployed on EOS. Development is time consuming. It's not magic although it certainly feels like it sometimes because the tech is so complex.

Also, do you really think Hive account@dan is going to put competing with Steemit at the top of his priorities list when there are literally a million other things he could be doing?