[DrShuppet]

This is definitely an interesting and ambitious project, documenting closed-source software in detail always requires some cleverness to be able to "see in the dark".

I'm curious about a few things:

• Where is the timeline estimate coming from? Do you have a rough outline of what steps you need to do to achieve your goal and an estimate of the diffuculties that might arise?
  
• Are you going to improve the kernel once you have reverse engineered it? IRIX 5.3 was released in 1995, there were many advancements in operating system theory since then in memory allocation, scheduling etc.
  
• What do you expect to get from reverse engineering the IRIX 5.3 kernel? Do you want e.g. to document its distinguishing features from other contemporary derivatives of SVR3/SVR4 and see if maybe something is interesting even today, or are you just doing it because of nostalgia and retro-computing fun (not saying that is wrong, quite the opposite)?
  
• How many people are planned to be working on the project?
  

I won't hide that I'm a little worried about the ambiguity in the initial post, I'd want to believe that after making the annoucement you are really taking it seriously - I know from my own past with attempting to do hard things that one cannot run on pure enthusiasm, since with this kind of work you are eventually going to get to the ugly stuff, and I wouldn't like to see the project just fading into obscurity because it not having proper motivation and organization.

Given that, I saw many amazing projects that have succeeded in this community, including Dodoid's DFRD remote viewing and TruHobbyist's File Looper and patchMLOADBLK, hence I believe there is an non-negligible chance of this project going well (unlike what some people online say). Anyway good luck, and don't get dissuaded by haters, somehow the IRIX community is prone to unnecessary drama :/. I might want to contribute myself when I'll see it's going somewhere and I'll have some time.