The Linux Console Tools were derived from kbd. However, it is not a good thing to
have two distinct distributions for these tools. I hope we'll manage
to finally merge the two packages back, together with Andries Brouwer,
who still maintains kbd
.
There is an ongoing project, known as GGI (for General Graphical Interface), which is in the process of, among other things, revolutionarize the way the console is handled. Have a look at their WWW site for details.
Thus I don't think it is a good idea to hack the official console driver at this time. As there are many improvements to do, they will probably have to be done in the GGI drivers.
Well, as of 2.1.1xx kernels, the console driver has been thoroughly modified. I hope those guys know what they're doing ;)
As far as possible, I will try to keep the Linux Console Tools in sync with what is developped for the kernel, and to what gets added to new releases of kbd but I have to look better at the current state of the GGI project before I give any more info.