Ask HN: Reverse engineering whirpool.net.au into a F/OSS web app

Whirlpool (AKA WP), is a very popular tech 'forum' in Australia / Nz.

For an overview of it's arch, see here: https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/wp_architecture

And these 2 links lead off to just about anything else related to the service: https://forums.whirlpool.net.au https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki

For those unfamiliar, there's a tonne of great enduser features (inc. a very powerful userscript called wp+).

I'd love to rebuild it all into a modern FOSS web app, one that uses just html/css/js etc, instead of java.

With it's own unique UX/UI, but one that still hints-at or feels, a lot like WP.

Interested in folks thoughts on how best to approach this.