OpenGEM > Interviews > Owen Rudge
Around the year 2000 there was a lot of activity in the FreeGEM community, and Owen Rudge was in the thick of it. Not only did he make contributions to various GEM applications and the underlying code base, but he made a great FreeGEM distribution. So great, in fact, that we used his distribution to make the Release 1 series of OpenGEM.

What do you do in the FreeGEM world?

I currently don't have too much time for GEM unfortunately, but I do keep my site running, and keep an active and interested eye on the GEM mailing list. In the past, I have worked on creating what was once the largest and most actively developed distribution of FreeGEM, as long with maintaining and creating a number of particularly multimedia-orientated applications, such as GEMP3, developer bindings for Heinz's sound drivers, and a GEM MIDI player. In the past, I have also been known to be responsible for various amusing off-topic conversations on the mailing list...

When did you start using GEM?

I started using GEM back in 1994 on my old AMSTRAD 1640, at the ripe old age of 8. Ah, the good ol' days...

When did you start working on FreeGEM?

I started working on FreeGEM in early 2000, after reading about GEM's open sourcing in late 1999 in PC Plus magazine. My initial project was a GEM Download Manager, with the aim of cataloguing all available GEM material into a single easy-to-use source.

What bits did you make for FreeGEM?

I have done some basic work on FreeGEM Output, while also working on GEMP3 - the first MP3 player for GEM, a GEM MIDI Player, a GEM MOD Player, some BASIC and C bindings for Heinz Rath's sound drivers, and of course my own FreeGEM distribution, the latest version of which is currently 1.2 - including its own setup program. My 'current' projects that are being worked on are a much more advanced setup program for GEM, and an update to GEMP3 - hopefully sometime in the next little while I may be able to spend some time working on GEM again.

What's your favourite thing about FreeGEM?

I love the speed and simplicity of FreeGEM, and it's general no-nonsense attitude. You don't get that with a lot of GUIs.

What do you hate most about FreeGEM?

While FreeGEM is fast and simple, it also has some general weaknesses, such as a lack of multitasking (GEM/XM, while nice, is severely hampered by the DOS 640K limit), and a general limit as to how far - at the moment - it can expand.

How do you see FreeGEM developing in the future?

I think FreeGEM should eventually try to make it to 32-bits, but without becoming huge and bloated at the same time, if possible. Also, there is a wealth of useful code and applications in the Atari world - we should try to harness and port as much as possible here, to really help GEM become a killer GUI for DOS.

What do you think about the OpenGEM distribution?

I like what's being done with OpenGEM - I'll have to admit, at times in the past I was slightly sceptical about OpenGEM in some ways, but it has really been promoted well, and when I recently downloaded "Project Liberation", I was amazed really at just how good GEM had become. I hope OpenGEM - and possibly other distributions, such as my own FreeGEM distribution, if I can pull it into shape, will continue to flourish in the future..