Andreas Gal

{{Short description|Hungarian software developer (born 1976)}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Andreas Gal

| image = File:Andreas Gal.jpg

| caption =

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1976|05|22}}

| birth_place = Szeged, Hungary

| other_names =

| known_for =

| nationality = German, American

| alma_mater = University of California, Irvine

| thesis_title = Efficient Bytecode Compilation and Verification in a Virtual Machine

| doctoral_advisor = Michael Franz

| website = {{URL|http://andreasgal.com/}}

| alt = Andreas Gal

| workplaces = CEO, Silk Labs

}}

Andreas Gal is former chief technology officer at Mozilla. He is most notable for his work on several open source projects and Mozilla technologies.

Gal was born in Szeged, Hungary{{cite thesis |last=Gal |first=Andreas |date=2006 |title=Efficient bytecode verification and compilation in a virtual machine |publisher=University of California, Irvine |docket=AAI3243940 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/305372416 |access-date=2020-12-13|id={{ProQuest|305372416}} }} and grew up in Lübeck, Germany.{{cite web|title=Andreas Gal - Der Freiheitskämpfer|url=http://dreisechsnull.telekom.de/mozilla-forschungschef-andreas-gal-der-freiheitskmpfer/|access-date=26 April 2014|author=Iris Quirin|language=de|archive-url=https://archive.today/20140426231223/http://dreisechsnull.telekom.de/mozilla-forschungschef-andreas-gal-der-freiheitskmpfer/|archive-date=2014-04-26|url-status=dead}} During high school he worked on various open source AX.25 network stacks and designed a routing protocol for ham radio network nodes (INP3{{cite web|url=http://nordlink.dyndns.org/cms/index.php?id=27 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130414142300/http://nordlink.dyndns.org/cms/index.php?id=27 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2013-04-14 |title=Inter Node Protocol 3 }}) that became widely supported by AX.25 network routers.{{cite web|url=http://he.fi/archive/linux-hams/200110/0032.html|title=INP3 support for Linux|access-date=2013-03-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141124213729/http://he.fi/archive/linux-hams/200110/0032.html|archive-date=2014-11-24|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.langelaar.net/projects/jnos2/news/|title=JNOS news|access-date=2013-03-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427044607/http://www.langelaar.net/projects/jnos2/news/|archive-date=2014-04-27|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.swiss-artg.ch/xnet/pdf/intern.pdf|title=(X)Net user manual|access-date=2013-03-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071019194831/http://www.swiss-artg.ch/xnet/pdf/intern.pdf|archive-date=2007-10-19|url-status=dead}}

During his graduate studies at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg he was a codesigner of AspectC++, an aspect-oriented extension of C and C++ languages.{{cite web|url=https://www.academia.edu/267150|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130409230828/http://www.academia.edu/267150/AspectC_Language_Proposal_and_Prototype_Implementation|url-status=dead|archive-date=2013-04-09|title=AspectC++: Language Proposal and Prototype Implementation}} He later went on to obtain his Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. His thesis introduced the concept of Tracing just-in-time compilation of high-level languages using trace trees.

[http://static.usenix.org/events/vee06/full_papers/p144-gal.pdf "HotpathVM: an effective JIT compiler for resource-constrained]

Andreas Gal, Christian W. Probst, Michael Franz - Proceeding VEE '06 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Virtual execution environments

{{doi|10.1145/1134760.1134780}}.

Gal joined Mozilla in 2008 and built TraceMonkey, the first JavaScript just-in-time compiler{{cite web|url=https://brendaneich.com/2008/08/tracemonkey-javascript-lightspeed/|title=TraceMonkey: JavaScript Lightspeed}} in a web browser, only weeks before Google announced Chrome and the V8 JavaScript engine. After his work on TraceMonkey, Gal became the Director of Research at Mozilla. A notable research project he started was PDF.js, a PDF renderer in JavaScript and HTML5, which now replaces the Adobe PDF plug-in in Firefox.{{cite web|url=http://www.webpronews.com/mozilla-kills-the-pdf-plugin-in-firefox-19-2013-01|title=Mozilla Kills The PDF Plugin In Firefox 19|access-date=2013-03-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141126045520/http://www.webpronews.com/mozilla-kills-the-pdf-plugin-in-firefox-19-2013-01|archive-date=2014-11-26|url-status=dead}}

In 2011, Gal co-founded the Boot to Gecko project, which later became Firefox OS.{{cite mailing list |last = Gal |first = Andreas |title = Booting to the web |mailing-list = mozilla.dev.platform |date = 2011-07-25|url=https://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse_thread/thread/7668a9d46a43e482?pli=1 |access-date = 2011-11-20 }}

In 2013, Gal was appointed the Vice President of Mobile Engineering of Mozilla.{{cite web|url=http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasgal|title=Andreas Gal's Linkedin page}}

In April 2014, Gal became the CTO of Mozilla.{{cite web|url=https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/24/mozilla-cto-andreas-gal/|title=Mozilla CTO: Andreas Gal}} In June 2015 he left Mozilla,{{Cite web|title = New Adventure|url = http://andreasgal.com/2015/06/05/new-adventure/|website = Andreas Gal| date=5 June 2015 |access-date = 2015-06-05}} co-founding the Internet of Things start-up Silk Labs with two other members of the Firefox OS team (however, Silk Labs does not use Mozilla technologies).{{Cite web|url=http://www.cnet.com/news/startup-aims-to-make-home-devices-smart-enough-to-anticipate-what-you-need/|title=Startup aims to make home devices smart enough to anticipate what you need|last=Shankland|first=Stephen|date=2016-08-21|website=CNET|access-date=2016-06-21}} Also in 2015, Gal became an adviser at Acadine Technologies; a startup newly founded by Li Gong (former president of Mozilla Corporation) which was to develop software based on Firefox OS.{{Cite web|url = http://www.cnet.com/news/startup-acadine-picks-up-the-torch-for-mozillas-troubled-firefox-os/|title = Startup picks up the torch for troubled Firefox OS|last = Shankland|first = Stephen|date = 2015-12-10|website = CNET|access-date = 2015-12-12}} As of 2018, Gal is an employee of Apple Inc.