Dave Taylor, or
ddt, leaped into the public eye as a programmer at
id software. Advocating
Linux while everybody there was advocating
NeXT, he was the guy responsible for the
Linux ports of most of id's games up until after the release of
Quake. At that point, he moved on to found
Crack Dot Com, a game company with the goal of making mainstream gaming for Linux a reality. He was predicting the Linux OS as a
gaming platform in 1990.
Crack Dot Com's first release was an overlooked gem called Abuse. It was a side-scrolling shooter featuring an innovative keyboard/mouse control configuration. The game also featured a scripting system capable of making complex effects happen as a result of players actions, which was featured in the released level editor. Abuse did well enough to fund the development of the company's next product, Golgotha, a 3D Realtime Strategy game. Note that this was well before 3D RTS games were common.
Unfortunately, a few mistakes on the financial planning side and Taylor's innability to find a US publisher meant the company ran out of cash. Mr. Taylor attempted to find other source of revenue by creating a cd compilation of all of the textures (artwork to be used on 3D surfaces) the company had produced in their works so far, but it wasn't enough to keep the company afloat. Despite highly promising builds of Golgotha, Crack Dot Com died. Before closing everything down, however, the source code and assets to Golgotha were all released to the public, in hopes that the project would be continued or at least learned from by the Linux community.
Dave Taylor has most recently been sighted working at Transmeta, makers of the new Crusoe processors. On a personal note, having conversed with ddt himself, I can state that he is a very friendly and intelligent man.