Very good approach, I am fully with you on the need for the community to step up and live the "decentralized" idea in full - not only decentralized operations but also a community of developers that is decentralized and generates new ideas faster than in a centralized setting.
With the "selection mechanism" of the witness approval vote - which BTW happens where, in github or in steem.chat or is it simply by upgrading the code they run ? I'm curious how things work during the transition period - when some witnesses have upgraded but others not - what happens to a specific payout then depends on what version runs on the node that processes the "author reward transaction", right ?