1. +1 to join chirp_devel list and discuss there further. also, you have probably seen: http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Developers

2. I am all for putting the project on github so that forking and derivative works are easier to manage/merge/recombine features, etc. (Not to mention things like builtin code reviews, ability to run pre-hooked testing, for each pull request, etc).
However, I dont think this is the majority opinion of development team yet. ;)

3. The entry point for ui is chirpw -> chirpui/mainapp.py

-Jens
AF5MI