I've read all the way through this thread today and it does seem like quite a good idea. I would we willing to contribute to the project depending on time where possible. I've built several LFS systems, and countless Gentoo installations so I don't have a problem waiting for things to compile, its just my personal circumstances are liable to change shortly. Once the community has drawn up a list of features and requirements I shall look at how I can help further.
On the subject of leadership, I agree that there should be an overall project leader but I feel there should also be a committee/board to discuss major changes and implementation stratergies.
The installer could be something of an after thought. Why waste time worrying too much about an installer which doesn't yet have anything to install? You could always tar the filesystem image and make it available. Having used CoLinux, and looking at their disk images, a Gentoo stage 3 disk image is (last time I checked) about 80MB. Installation would then just be following some of the basic principle of Gentoo and Debian, where by the user needs to set up the partition information and format the disk using the standard tools like fdisk and mkreiserfs. Once testing of the initial release/few releases has been completed I would then worry about the installer.
As LXF can not guarantee the continuation of the project, why not wait until the community has created an release. We could contribute information about the building of the distro, documenting the procedures and pitfalls we encounter, giving them material that they can then work from. Whilst looking for some more information on this topic I found
http://alindis.sourceforge.net/index.html which, although not updated for some time, appears to be what we are trying to achieve, a distro with documentation on how to achieve building it.
For those looking for something more than the base system talked about, it could also be possible for members of the community and users of the distro to extend the functionality, for example to include support for X and desktop environments. Therefore I don't think that we need to consider this yet, all I would worry about was building a system that complies with the Linux Standards Base.
I'm looking into building a LFS system at the moment, but want to include package management from the beginning so that all packages installed are handled by rpm/apt etc. There is a hint on the LFS site to add RPM, but it is for adding RPMs to the already made system. I've had a few ideas as to how to achieve this but could anyone give me a point in the right direction. As Debian has been mention, how to go about making .deb's and software required for package manager would be great.
If I successfully manage to achieve this I will post my method up. If I do I may then try to cure one of my major frustrations with Linux, GUI appearance. I know theres QT themes for GTK and vice versa like Bluecurve but they never quite manage to do a perfect job. What about implementing the same thing in WINE? IE looking like a KDE app? Why? To make it blend in; to make it look less of an after thought.
Sorry about the length, but I hope I've given you something to think about.