Trolltech® announced that it has appointed Lars Knoll as Vice President of Engineering. As a senior member of the Trolltech development team, and an open source community leader, Mr. Knoll has led projects that have broken significant technical ground in the areas of web browsing and user interfaces for Linux desktops, devices and applications.
Mr. Knoll will head the company’s global development organization, leading teams in Norway, Germany and Australia. His responsibilities will include working with product managers to define product road maps, and maintaining oversight of the development Trolltech’s commercial products, and its contributions to the KDE®, WebKit and other open source communities.
Mr. Knoll – a longstanding contributor to the KDE project – was recruited to Trolltech seven years ago by Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE and then development manager for Trolltech’s Qt® product line. Mr. Knoll has contributed to numerous Trolltech projects, including work on the Sharp® Zaurus™ which resulted in one of the first ever Linux-based consumer devices. Since that time, he has worked closely with the rest of the global development team on a series of initiatives aimed at easing cross-platform application development.
Mr. Knoll is the architect behind KHTML, which was the foundation for WebKit: an open source browser engine that has been used in more than 75 different software products and is widely recognized as the basis for the Apple® Safari™ application program. Currently, WebKit is also gaining in popularity in the growing open mobile community where it has been adopted by Nokia® and implemented as part of Symbian®.
Mr. Knoll completed his Ph.D. in physics while at the Max Plank Institute in Heidelberg. During his Ph.D. he worked at the Weizman Institute of Science, Israel’s largest science institution.
“We pride ourselves on providing developers with a workplace where they can balance their contributions across company and community, and be creative members of a large and extremely talented global development team,” said Haavard Nord, Trolltech CEO. “Lars has been a significant contributor to the success of Trolltech, and we are extremely proud to be welcoming him onto the Trolltech management team.”
About Trolltech
Trolltech creates cross-platform application development frameworks for desktop and mobile device innovation. Trolltech's software increases the appeal of our customer's desktop applications and devices while reducing their risks and software development costs. Trolltech's technologies accelerate the evolution of software by unleashing the creative power of the developer.
Trolltech software is the foundation for thousands of leading products worldwide, many from Global 2000 companies. Trolltech is a second-generation open source company, with a dual licensing business model that supports open source values and methodology in a profitable, sustainable business. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol TROLL. For more information about Trolltech, please visit http://www.trolltech.com