Tim O'Reilly in a Nutshell

By Dena Brooker
Reprinted with permission from chapters.indigo.ca

"We're not just about computers or computer books," says Tim O'Reilly, president and founder of O'Reilly & Associates. "We're really about solving information problems. Our core mission is transferring information from people who have it to people who need it."

It's a philosophy that has helped O'Reilly expand his company from a smallish tech writing consulting firm to one of the most respected publishers in the computer book business. Founded in 1978, the company published its first computer book in 1985. "As a consulting company, you have downtime," O'Reilly recalls. "I figured we might as well do something useful while we didn't have paying work, so we started writing manuals for programs we were using that didn't have very good documentation."

The venture took off as computer enthusiasts discovered the technically astute O'Reilly books. Today, the company publishes 250-plus titles, employs over 200 people and has offices in the U.S., Japan, France, Germany, the U.K., Taiwan and China. O'Reilly also publishes software, hosts Web sites, produces conferences and has branched out into non-computer publishing. Along the way, O'Reilly - the company and the man - became well-known supporters of open source software, in which programmers share the all-important software source code.

Beyond publishing books on Perl and Linux and other open source languages, in 1998, O'Reilly founded the annual Open Source Convention.

Patent Pending

It was O'Reilly's support for open source software that led to a well-publicized disagreement with U.S. online retailer Amazon earlier this year. Amazon patented its "one-click" shopping system, and then sued rival Barnes & Noble for copyright infringement. But many in the Internet community, including O'Reilly, argued that Amazon was trying to patent a simple twist on cookies, a technology that has been used on the Web for years.

"Amazon didn't start the patent issue - it's just a single example of a trend that is somewhat dangerous to the Internet," says O'Reilly. In an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, posted on the O'Reilly Web site, he wrote: "We believe that the rapid innovation on the ... Internet that has created so much new value for the public (as well as for Amazon and its shareholders) will be choked off if companies take the short-sighted route of filing patents on commonly accepted ... techniques."

Bezos responded with an open letter to O'Reilly on Amazon.com, and soon the two were talking about software patent reform. In April, they went to Washington to lobby the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for changes to the law. "I'm still chewing on what I learned," says O'Reilly. "I'm not sure the solution will come out of Washington - I really think it has to come from the industry. The question is how do we do that in a way the Patent Office will pay attention to?"

E-book Evolution

O'Reilly's support for the collaborative approach extends from software to the emerging world of electronic books. "I think the downloadable book is certainly important, and I think we're seeing a lot of interesting action on that front," he says. "But I think what's gone wrong so far is that many of the early entrants have tried to go it alone. I believe it won't take off until there's a distribution system analogous to what we have in print. It might involve a lot of the existing print retailers, but it might also involve other kinds of aggregators, perhaps new players.

"My point is that each time the Web goes into a new area, everybody thinks 'We can get all the customers for ourselves.' What they don't realize is that distribution systems are kind of like the alveoli in your lungs - they're a way of getting additional surface area for contact with customers."

Of the current e-book developments, O'Reilly - perhaps surprisingly - says Microsoft's initiative shows the most promise. "People often think of me as anti-Microsoft, but I'm not, I call it as I see it," he says. "And what I see here is that Microsoft is the only player in the e-books space who is trying to make everybody else's business work. At least in the presentations that I've seen, they're trying to enable retailers, they're trying to enable wholesalers, they're trying to enable publishers, and they're trying to enable authors."

While the "killer app" for downloadable books hasn't yet emerged, O'Reilly is forging ahead with other online publishing projects. It currently produces the CD Bookshelf line, featuring related books on CD-ROM. "We have always seen this as a transitional product," he says, combining the benefits of online publishing with the traditional, retail purchase route.

Later this year, the company plans to launch a pay-for-use Web site. It will provide "a similar, library-style concept as the CDs," says O'Reilly. "People will basically be able to buy books and add them to an online library, which they can access on the Web."

In recent years, O'Reilly began publishing two new imprints: Traveler's Tales take an off-the-beaten-track approach to travel guides; Patient Centered Guides help readers cope with major diseases.

The company is looking at other specialized imprints, including business books, along with some new developments in the core technology book business. "I think you'll see that we keep looking for those areas out on the edges," says O'Reilly, "where there's this big gap between the people who have really figured out something early, and this bigger group that's coming along behind them. We really look for those kinds of frontiers, where you have an opportunity to add to the sum of human knowledge."