Timothy O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is an Irish-American author and publisher, who is the founder of

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media, Inc. (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that provides technical and professional skills development courses via an online learning platform. O'Reilly also publishes b ...

(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 and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

and

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

Education and early life

Born in

County Cork County Cork () is the largest and the southernmost Counties of Ireland, county of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, named after the city of Cork (city), Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster ...

, 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 General semantics is a school of thought that incorporates philosophy, philosophic and science, scientific aspects. Although it does not stand on its own as a separate list of schools of philosophy, school of philosophy, a separate science, or ...

program. Through Simon, O'Reilly became acquainted with the work of

Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (; ; July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American philosopher and independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, ...

, which he has cited as a formative experience. In 1973, O'Reilly enrolled at

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

to study

classics Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

and graduated ''cum laude'' with a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

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 Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. (October 8, 1920February 11, 1986) was an American science-fiction author, best known for his 1965 novel Dune (novel), ''Dune'' and its five sequels. He also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, ...

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 located roughly west of Downtown Boston, and comprises a patchwork of thirteen villages. The city borders Boston to the northeast and southeast (via the neighborhoods 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, California, with a recorded population of 7,521, per the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. Census. Sebastopol was once primarily a plum- and apple-growing region. Wine grapes are the predominant a ...

, 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 A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

, the Global Network Navigator, which in 1995 was sold to

America Online AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. The service tra ...

. The company suffered in the dot-com crash of 2000. As book sales decreased, O'Reilly laid off about seventy people, approximately a quarter of staff, but thereafter rebuilt the company around

ebook An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...

publishing and event production. In 2011, Tim O'Reilly gave control of O'Reilly Media to the company's CFO, Laura Baldwin, but kept his longtime title of CEO. As a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

ist, O'Reilly has invested in companies such as Fastly,

Blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

, Delicious, Foursquare, Bitly, and Chumby. O'Reilly serves on the board of directors of

Safari Books Online A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

, Maker Media,

PeerJ ''PeerJ'' is an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. It officially launched in June 2012, started accepting submissions on December 3, 2012, and published its first articles ...

, and the nonprofit organization Code for America. He was a board member of

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...

until its 2005 merger with

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

, and of

MySQL AB MySQL AB was a Swedish software company founded in 1995. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, Sun was in turn acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. MySQL AB is the creator of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well a ...

until its sale to

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

. In February 2012, he joined the

UC Berkeley School of Information The University of California, Berkeley School of Information (sometimes abbreviated as Berkeley I School) is a graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California. The school was established in 1 ...

Advisory Board. In 2017, O'Reilly published the book ''WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us'' about technology's potential to enhance the human experience.

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 United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

, and

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, 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 Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

, against Amazon's one-click patent and, specifically, Amazon's assertion of that patent against rival

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

. The protest ended with O'Reilly and Amazon.com founder

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...

visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

Open source software

In 1998, O'Reilly helped rebrand

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

under the term

. 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 communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

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 t ...

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

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, 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 Darcy DiNucci is an author, web designer and expert in user experience. DiNucci coined the term ''Web 2.0'' in 1999 and predicted the influence it would have on public relations. Career DiNucci has worked in web design and user experience in a num ...

, 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 Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that Emergence, emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiolog ...

" 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 distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate. In 1935, Tansley added the ...

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 are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...

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 Ti ...

for the use of

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within organisations whereby the organisation may still develop

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

but internally opens up its development.

Algorithmic attention rents

Originally proposed by Tim O’Reilly, and developed further in collaboration with Ilan Strauss and

Mariana Mazzucato Mariana Francesca Mazzucato (born June 16, 1968) is an Italian–American-British economist and academic. She is a professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and founding director of the UCL Inst ...

, “algorithmic attention rents” entails the use of a platform’s algorithms to allocate user attention to content which is more profitable or beneficial to the platform, at the expense of its ecosystem of users and third-party firms, content creators, website developers, etc. Algorithms are used to degrade the quality of information shown to the user, as paid for and addictive content is promoted ahead of “organic” content which best meets users needs. A detailed case study has been undertaken with respect to Amazon and its ability to degrade search results quality through the inclusion of (duplicated) paid advertising results in its product search results for its third-party marketplace. The theoretical (legal-economic) underpinnings of this is discussed in a companion paper.

Personal life

After graduating from Harvard, O'Reilly married his first wife, Christina, with whom he moved to the

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

area. The couple raised two daughters, Arwen and Meara. Arwen is married to Saul Griffith. On 11 April 2015 O'Reilly married Jennifer Pahlka, a former Deputy CTO of the US, and Founder and former Executive Director of Code for America.

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 Irish technology writers Writers from Cork (city) Harvard College alumni People from Sebastopol, California People from San Francisco Irish emigrants to the United States Open content activists Activists from Cork (city) Businesspeople from Cork (city) American computer programmers Irish computer programmers Perl people Open source advocates