It runs inside a chroot, thus it requires root.

I didn't write this script to help people run steemd on a server, I did it so that developers don't have to manually futz with their terrible code. I want to get to the task of fixing that terrible code sooner rather than later. I am aiming for a public beta release on Halloween. 

Steemit locked me out of making contributions like this directly to their repository because they are a bunch of nincompoops who clearly don't care about the community and are happy to run the network into the ground as fast as they can and squeeze a little more money out before they make a dust trail into the sunset as they emigrate out of the USA where probably hundreds of people will be wanting their asses laid out for what they are doing here.

If you want to have access to a platform like steemit, in the near future, the only option is going to be Calibrae. Steemit cannot possibly keep running more than 3-5 months without requiring literal supercomputers to run the RPC nodes to run the website. That's what they are building, apparently, too.

There will be nobody able to run their own nodes within 3 months, unless you have a budget well over $300/month for servers