Hi Kat,
I am not a developer either - hence the open question.
You may well be right, but OTOH Gantry is effectively a development platform in and of itself, and AfterBurner was developed as a lean and mean - hence fast loading - template.
Thanks for the blog link in which Andy says:
Gantry as a 100% GPL project. Originally Gantry started life as a way for our own team to create quality, feature-rich Joomla templates, faster and cleaner, while allowing the end-user more power in customization.
I am just getting up to speed with Gantry after concluding a long-distance, across water home move, but I am extremely impressed with what I have seen so far, and would love to see Gantry applied to the creation of another lean, mean, fast template like Afterburner.
Regards and Happy New Year,
Adrian.