On my system I forked dash to create 'bolderdash.' Right now it's pretty basic, I have changed little (just did some cleanup), but I did add in a couple tweaks to enhance bash compatibility. The goal is a complete refactor, more compatibility with bash, and much better command line editing etc, while still remaining sleek and lightweight.

I'm also forking musl to create 'powrlibc.' It will have a lot better glibc compatibility, as well as better optimizations and some other improvements.

I've personally run Gentoo with OpenRC+glibc and OpenRC+musl on my laptop. I assure you ditching systemd was easier than ditching glibc. The OpenRC system mostly just works (tbh thanks to a lot of great work by Gentoo devs). The musl system required probably a couple dozen patches to various packages to get a basic fully working desktop (most of which were relatively straightforward, but still needed manual intervention).