I see three problems with that:

(1) I'm too old fashioned. Never used git or any revision/version control systems. Just plain Makefile. But I can learn.

(2) I actually would prefer to turn Maemo into something more Linux-standard-ish. Meaning no BME. Hopefully also no HAL and even no DBUS (somehow I despise anything supported by freedesktop.org -- don't know why -- it seems there's a coordinated effort to over-complicate things).

(3) Lack of time.

I'll nevertheless have a look at the code and see if I can figure out anything. I never made an effort to understand some parts of Maemo. Instead I just wanted to get rid of them (BME, DSME, HAL, OHM). I can I live with DBUS.. for now

Add.: I forgot upstart. I don't like it. It makes the whole boot process unduly complicated. The N900 doesn't need all of that. Just a "linear" boot script and another shutdown script.