Splashy was spawned from the idea of creating a system that didn't require to patch the kernel in order to show an image with a progress bar while the system boots. This idea in turn came from the now venerable project bootsplash. We created debsplash port of bootsplash on Alioth so that Debian can have a native boot splash package. That project was quickly replaced with gensplash's patch (gentoo for those of you who don't know). We quickly abandoned gensplash as well because of how complicated the packages got in order to get the kernels to compile correctly and integrated with the user-space utilities needed to deal with everything else.
At the time Ubuntu had specifications to create a solution for this very project. The specifications were called “usplash” (The “u” implies a combination of user-space and Ubuntu). We liked the idea and tried to get in contact with the Ubuntu developers. We quickly found out there was no code (or at least public code) written for such specifications. So, we took matters into our own hands and started producing a binary that will meet the specifications. We quickly got a working binary that used libdirectfb++ as it's supporting library to create an image on a framebuffer. This got the attention of a number of people who were working on the same problem, including the Ubuntu developers themselves.
Ubuntu and the now Splashy developers started working together on what was then called “usplash”. Back then it was a C++ program that people liked, but needed improvement. After Otavio Salvador joined the team, we took a vote to switch the code to C with the idea that this will make things faster and easier to code, plus give us a wider support from developers. Even though we all agree on this, some members of the team got disgruntled by this change and the project developers split, creating other forks like upower and blotch.
Ubuntu developers took the bogl-based blotch code and started working on their own version of “usplash”. At the time, “usplash” was meant to be the name for the specification and not of any given binary or project. However, since we already started using this name as our project, the Ubuntu developers asked us to switch the name from usplash to something else. We chose “Splashy” (my inspiration). And we went our separate ways.
2004-10-30 debsplash is registered on Alioth
2005-04-03 Vicenzo Ampolo to write early Splashy in C++
2005-04-10 Usplash specs are published
2005-04-11 Splashy is registered on Alioth
2005-04-17 Splashy is re-written in C
2005-04-22 Upower, a fork of Splashy, gets published on Nanofreesoft by Vicenzo Ampolo
2005-09-14 Vincent Amouret writes splashy-config
2005-12-15 Splashy gets registered in Freshmeat (Thanks to Jacobo Vilella)
2006-02-21 Pat Suwalski (Xandros Developer) sends first patch
2006-05-25 Vicenzo Ampolo rejoins the Splashy team and declares Upower as a “mistake”
2007-07-25 Bootsplash.org declares Splashy as successor and project is abandoned
2007-07-26 Mandriva's SRC RPMs are submitted to Splashy Team
Distributions that are currently working on using Splashy: