Tim O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is the founder of
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of ...
(formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
and
Web 2.0.
Education and early life
Born in
County Cork
County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns a ...
, Ireland, Tim O'Reilly moved to San Francisco, California, with his family when he was a baby.
He has three brothers and three sisters.
As a teenager, encouraged by his older brother Sean, O'Reilly became a follower of George Simon, a writer and adherent of the
general semantics program.
Through Simon, O'Reilly became acquainted with the work of
Alfred Korzybski,
which he has cited as a formative experience.
In 1973, O'Reilly enrolled at
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...
to study
classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
and graduated ''cum laude'' with a
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree in 1975. During O'Reilly's first year at Harvard, George Simon died in an accident.
Career
After graduating, O'Reilly completed an edition of Simon's ''Notebooks, 1965–1973''. He also wrote a well-received book on the science fiction writer Frank Herbert and edited a collection of Herbert's essays and interviews.
O'Reilly got started as a technical writer in 1977. He started publishing computer manuals in 1983, setting up his business in a converted barn in Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of ...
, where about a dozen employees worked in a single open room.[ In 1989, O'Reilly moved his company to ]Sebastopol, California
Sebastopol ( ) is a city in Sonoma County, in California with a recorded population of 7,521, per the 2020 U.S. Census.
Sebastopol was once primarily a plum and apple-growing region. Today, wine grapes are the predominant agriculture crop, ...
, and published the '' Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog'', which was a best-seller in 1992.[ O'Reilly's business, then known as O'Reilly & Associates, steadily grew through the 1990s, during which period it expanded from paper printed materials to web publishing. In 1993, the company's catalogue became an early web portal, the Global Network Navigator, which in 1995 was sold to America Online.
The company suffered in the dotcom crash of 2000. As book sales decreased, O'Reilly had to lay off about seventy people, about a quarter of the staff,][ but thereafter rebuilt the company around ]ebook
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
publishing and event production. In 2011 O'Reilly handed over the reins of O'Reilly Media to the company's CFO, Laura Baldwin, but retained the title of CEO in recognition for the indispensable role he had in building the O'Reilly Media company and brand.
O'Reilly serves on the board of directors of three companies: Safari Books Online, Maker Media, and PeerJ
''PeerJ'' is an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. It is published by a company of the same name that was co-founded by CEO Jason Hoyt (formerly at Mendeley) and publisher ...
. He served on the board of Macromedia until its 2005 merger with Adobe Systems, and on the board of MySQL AB until its sale to Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...
. He also serves on the board of directors for Code for America
Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. According to its website, the organizat ...
. In February 2012, he joined the UC Berkeley School of Information Advisory Board. As a venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...
ist, O'Reilly has invested in companies such as Fastly, Blogger, Delicious, Foursquare, Bitly
Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, a ...
, and Chumby
The Chumby was a consumer electronics product formerly made by Chumby Industries, Inc. It is an embedded computer which provides Internet and LAN access via a Wi-Fi connection. Through this connection, the Chumby runs various software widgets. In ...
.
In 2017, O'Reilly's book ''WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us'' was published, in which he discusses the consequences of technology and its potential to enhance the human experience.
Advocacy
O'Reilly has worked as an activist for a number of causes and prides himself on his company's "long history of advocacy, meme
A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ...
-making, and evangelism
In Christianity, evangelism (or witnessing) is the act of preaching the gospel with the intention of sharing the message and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Christians who specialize in evangelism are often known as evangelists, whether they are ...
." As a strategy of persuasion, he has evolved a technique of "meme engineering," which seeks to modify the terminology that people use.
Early causes
In 1996, O'Reilly fought against a 10-Connection Limit on TCP/IP NT Workstations, writing a letter to the United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
, Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
, and CNN, concerned that the Internet was still in its infancy, and that limitations could cripple the technology before it ever had a chance to reach its full potential. In 2001, O'Reilly was involved in a dispute with Amazon.com, against Amazon's one-click patent and, specifically, Amazon's assertion of that patent against rival Barnes & Noble. The protest ended with O'Reilly and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former presi ...
visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.
Open source software
In 1998, O'Reilly helped rebrand free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...
under the term open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
. O'Reilly sees the role of open source as being inseparable from the development of the Internet, pointing to the widely used TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...
protocol, sendmail
Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) used for email transport over the Internet.
A descendant of the ...
, Apache, Perl
Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...
, Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
and other open source platforms. He is concerned about trends towards new forms of lock-in.
Web 2.0
In 2003, after the dot com bust
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Com ...
, O'Reilly Media's corporate goal was to reignite enthusiasm in the computer industry. Dale Dougherty, an executive at O'Reilly, invoked the phrase "Web 2.0" during a brainstorming session. Though O'Reilly is often credited with popularizing the phrase Web 2.0, it originated with Darcy DiNucci, who coined the term in 1999. O'Reilly went on to popularize the phrase as a handle for the resurgence of the web after the dotcom crash of 2000, and as a generic term for the "harnessing of collective intelligence" viewed as the hallmark of this resurgence. O'Reilly first called an "executive conference" in 2004, inviting five hundred technology and business leaders, followed by a public version of the event in 2005. Annual iterations of the event, known as the " Web 2.0 Summit" from 2006 onwards, continued until 2011.
O'Reilly and employees of O'Reilly Media have applied the "2.0" concept to conferences in publishing and government, amongst other things. O'Reilly envisions the Internet Operating System as consisting of various sub systems, such as media, payment, speech recognition, location, and identity. He uses the analogy of the biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
of the human body having more bacterial than human cells (a ratio lately estimated at 1.3:1), but depending upon millions of other organisms each pursuing their own interest but nevertheless weaving a co-operative web.
Government as platform
O'Reilly has been propagating the notion of "government as platform", or "Gov 2.0". He is considered the most enthusiastic promoter of algorithmic regulation, the ongoing monitoring and modification of government policies via open data
Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...
feedback.
Inner source
In 2001, O'Reilly coined the term inner source
InnerSource is the use of open source software development best practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within organizations for the development of its non-open-source and/or proprietary software. The term was coined by Tim ...
for the use of open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
software development practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within organisations whereby the organisation may still develop proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and i ...
but internally opens up its development.
Personal life
After graduating from Harvard, O'Reilly married his first wife, Christina, with whom he moved to the Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
area. The couple raised two daughters, Arwen and Meara. Arwen is married to Saul Griffith.[
On 11 April 2015 O'Reilly married ]Jennifer Pahlka
Jennifer Pahlka (born 27 December 1969) is the founder and former Executive Director of Code for America. She served as US Deputy Chief Technology Officer from June 2013 to June 2014 and helped found the United States Digital Service. Previously s ...
, a former Deputy CTO of the US, and Founder and former Executive Director of Code for America
Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. According to its website, the organizat ...
.
See also
* Algorithmic regulation
* Infoware
* Web 2.0
*O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of ...
*'' Make''
* Foo Camp
*Inner source
InnerSource is the use of open source software development best practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within organizations for the development of its non-open-source and/or proprietary software. The term was coined by Tim ...
References
External links
FUTURIST magazine interview with O'Reilly
Re: Future of Publishing
NerdTV Interview
(video, audio, and transcript available) – 29 September 2005
Tim O'Reilly interview – O'Reilly on Linux
PC Pro interview covering Linux, Java and books
Tim O'Reilly talks about Govt 2.0 at Aspen Ideas Festival, July 2009
video
Tim O'Reilly on FLOSS Weekly
* Speaking with Stewart Brand and The Long Now on the subjec
“Birth of the Global Mind”
(020130905)
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oreilly, Tim
1954 births
Living people
American technology writers
People from County Cork
Harvard College alumni
People from Sebastopol, California
Irish emigrants to the United States
Open content activists
Irish computer programmers
Perl people
Open source advocates