“They say every Open Source software project is started by a
single programmer scratching an itch,” but for Rich Gade the
motivations that led to Gnu Gaming Zone, a free software game
development project, might be more appropriately chalked up to
existential angst.”
“Gade, GGZ’s creator and a senior system administrator by trade,
still recalls the feeling that used to eat away at him during his
day job. “Here I was at work, at a vastly under-budgeted 2-year
college, using this fantastic operating system that beat the pants
off of NT, for free–for free!” he says. “I put a penguin on the
home page. I linked to sites supporting Linux, and yet I still
didn’t feel like I was contributing.”
“To rectify that situation, Gade has chosen a corner of software
development still considered by many software developers to be the
last frontier of Open Source development. At the end of a decade
that has seen Open Source developers plant the Linux flag in every
corner of the commercial software marketplace, everything from
embedded systems to big iron mainframes, the ultra-proprietary $7
billion computer game development market remains surprisingly
oblivious to the Open Source gospel.”