Tim O'Reilly

Template:Short description Template:About Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Timothy O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is an Irish-American author and publisher, who is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source<ref name=OpenSource>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Web 2.0.

Education and early lifeEdit

Born in County Cork, Ireland, Tim O'Reilly moved to San Francisco, California with his family when he was a baby.<ref name="oracle" /> He has three brothers and three sisters.<ref name=trend>Template:Cite magazine</ref> 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.<ref name="oracle" /><ref name="trend" /> Through Simon, O'Reilly became acquainted with the work of Alfred Korzybski,<ref name=morozov /> which he has cited as a formative experience.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1973, O'Reilly enrolled at Harvard College to study classics and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. During O'Reilly's first year at Harvard, George Simon died in an accident.<ref name=trend/><ref name=morozov />

CareerEdit

After graduating, O'Reilly completed an edition of Simon's Notebooks, 1965–1973.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He also wrote a well-received book on the science fiction writer Frank Herbert<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and edited a collection of Herbert's essays and interviews.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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, where about a dozen employees worked in a single open room.<ref name=trend/> In 1989, O'Reilly moved his company to Sebastopol, California, and published the Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, which was a best-seller in 1992.<ref name=trend/> 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 dot-com crash of 2000. As book sales decreased, O'Reilly laid off about seventy people, approximately a quarter of staff,<ref name=trend/> but thereafter rebuilt the company around ebook 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 capitalist, O'Reilly has invested in companies such as Fastly, Blogger, Delicious,<ref name="trend" /> Foursquare, Bitly, and Chumby.<ref name="levy">Template:Cite magazine</ref> O'Reilly serves on the board of directors of Safari Books Online, Maker Media, PeerJ, and the nonprofit organization Code for America. He was a board member of Macromedia until its 2005 merger with Adobe Systems, and of MySQL AB until its sale to Sun Microsystems. In February 2012, he joined the UC Berkeley School of Information Advisory Board.<ref name="advisoryboard">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Early causesEdit

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, Bill Gates, 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.<ref name="TCPIP">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2001, O'Reilly was involved in a dispute with Amazon.com,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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 visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

Open source softwareEdit

In 1998, O'Reilly helped rebrand free software under the term open source.<ref name=morozov>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=p2p>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=vanrossum>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> O'Reilly sees the role of open source as being inseparable from the development of the Internet, pointing to the widely used TCP/IP protocol, sendmail, Apache, Perl, Linux and other open source platforms.<ref name=OpenSource /> He is concerned about trends towards new forms of lock-in.<ref name=Expo>Template:Cite video</ref>

Web 2.0Edit

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Though O'Reilly is often credited with popularizing the phrase Web 2.0, it originated with Darcy DiNucci, who coined the term in 1999.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> O'Reilly envisions the Internet Operating System<ref name=StateOS>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> as consisting of various sub systems, such as media, payment, speech recognition, location, and identity. He uses the analogy of the biome of the human body having more bacterial than human cells (a ratio lately estimated at 1.3:1),<ref name="Abbott2016">Template:Cite journal</ref> but depending upon millions of other organisms each pursuing their own interest but nevertheless weaving a co-operative web.<ref name=Expo2>Template:Cite video</ref>

Government as platformEdit

O'Reilly has been propagating the notion of "government as platform", or "Gov 2.0".<ref name="oracle">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He is considered the most enthusiastic promoter of algorithmic regulation,<ref name=death-of-politics>Template:Cite news</ref> the ongoing monitoring and modification of government policies via open data feedback.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Inner sourceEdit

In 2001, O'Reilly coined the term inner source for the use of open source software development practices and the establishment of an open source-like culture within organisations whereby the organisation may still develop proprietary software but internally opens up its development.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Algorithmic attention rentsEdit

Originally proposed by Tim O’Reilly, and developed further in collaboration with Ilan Strauss and Mariana Mazzucato, “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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The theoretical (legal-economic) underpinnings of this is discussed in a companion paper.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

After graduating from Harvard, O'Reilly married his first wife, Christina, with whom he moved to the Boston area.<ref name="oracle"/> The couple raised two daughters, Arwen and Meara. Arwen is married to Saul Griffith.<ref name=trend/>

On 11 April 2015 O'Reilly married Jennifer Pahlka,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Primary source inline<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> a former Deputy CTO of the US, and Founder and former Executive Director of Code for America.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> <ref name="TimTwitter"/>