NewsForge: Trolltech: A Case Study in Open Source Business | Linux Today

NewsForge: Trolltech: A Case Study in Open Source Business

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Oct 18, 2005

[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood
for this link. ]

“With a customer list that includes Opera, Skype, German
Brockhaus Encylopaedia, Google Earth, Adobe Photoshop Album, and
the KDE Project, Trolltech is obviously a successful company. It
has grown each year since it was founded by selling products that
compete with free-of-charge alternatives such as Java and .Net. It
now sponsors several free software developers who share all of
their work with the community under the GPL. Let’s take a closer
look at a company that makes money from free software.

“Founded in 1994 by Haavard Nord and Eirik Chambe-Eng, the
company’s goal was to create a free cross-platform GUI toolkit that
would simplify application development. Nord and Chambe-Eng
self-funded Trolltech and created a toolkit they named ‘Qt,’
pronounced ‘cute…'”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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