Well, I've just been working on this this week. actually the original bootsplash code has been staic for a very long time, but a couple of distros have, over the years done their own thing with it -particularly SuSE.
The official versions of bootsplash consisted of two things of course, the kernel patch and the Utilities. For kernel-2.4 the last official patch was version 3.0.7 and for the 2.6 kernels it was 3.1.6. the utilities versions matched these same numbers. But SuSE, Mandrake, debian and others kept adding version numbers in the 3.2 range. Most of these actually only added a small patch or two to the sources, but many changes to the onfig files. SuSE however mase significant changes to the sources of the Utilities with versions 3.2.x and even more in 3.3.x. They also had made some changes to the original 2.4 kernel patches to create version 3.0.9.
Gentoo used version 0.1.6 at some time in the past. I have been able to round up about a dozen different versions the last few months and have been working on consolidating everything that's useful.
I run Slackware and there is zero chance of bootsplash ever being standard in my distro of choice. But many slack users like bootsplash. I've even done what I think no one ever has in Slack -get the boot animations working! I also have come up with a super-patched version of grub which I use that incorporates patches from 7-8 distros and includes very good splash support.
Anyway, no one seems to have minded using the bootsplash name, even though the product was quite different. As far as I can tell, only debian was rigorous about keeping their patches separate from the original sources. The rest just made changes directly to the source files and distributed with whatever version number suited them. I have no qualms about doing it either way really. if the original developers don't want to relinquish the name to someone else it could just simply be forked.
For me bootsplash is not dead -it's just been sleeping. I know that there are now more 'politically correct' solutions that are 'userspace-only' tools, but they can't match the smoothness of the patched kernel.
I have updated the 3.0.9 and 3.1.6 patches to the latest kernels 2.4.36 and 2.6.24. Of course the 2.4 kernels don't pose much of a problem to update anymore since it has become so stable. The 2.6 series still occassionaly needs a bit of shuffling to get things in the right place, since the code gets moved around alot.
the 3.2-ish Utilities work fine with either kernel. The SuSE 3.3-ish versions do also, but they include extra options and functionality not available in most other distros unless they have built off of the SuSE 3.3 versions.
About the user space tools -there is an old program called 'fbv' which is dead simple to implement in user space or in an initrd -much easier than splashy or usplash. One of the frequent contributors to Puppy Linux has done a huge hack of fbv which he calls 'pebble'. I have sources for it but haven't really gotten around to trying it, though I believe in the guys abilities.
I am currently in the process of consolidating all the useful patches for the bootsplash utilities into 2 or 3 soure packages. The old 0.1.6 that gentoo used is still useful and may have some advantage -the 3.2 series had widesspread use and offer the most universal way of implementing in various distros as they were before. The 3.3 from SuSE has significant extra features that make for a larger, more capable splash utility. The latest(or last?) versions integrate the jpeg decoder and mng player into the splash program so that a single binary can be used in an initrd to handle the whole functionality.
So, want to work together or what? I have a whole site dedicated to NotDeadYEt software -I run a pure GTK-1.2 desktop and have 400-500 programs I've collected for it. I'm still keeping stuff up-to-date that has been abandoned for years, but I have the snappiest dektop around -without resorting to the tiny-but-ugly alternatives.
Powers that be? That's you and me and anyone else that will step up to the plate. I just recently forked the installwatch library (now libsentry). The developer/maintainer doesn't respond to e-mails(lately) or fix the bugs(since 2002). I came up with some serious fixes and forked it since I use it with one of my original programs and needed it to just 'work'. if the maintainers of bootsplash don't want to hand over nicely the use of the name or don't answer e-amils, well just keep all changes as patches or change the name.
You're nowhere near the only one who want to see bootsplash stay alive.
You can see some of the stuff I have here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...inux/download/
Some of the stuff I am working on the most is not up there yet, but stuff that I have done alot of work on is usually in the Projects area.
Let me know what you think or what you'd like to do about bootsplash, etc. 'pm' me if you like, or e-mail me directly -but put 'bootsplash' in the subject line, please.