Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reillyis the founder of O'Reilly Media. He popularized the terms open source and Web 2.0...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth6 June 1954
CountryIreland
act companies copyright crops fertile goes great patent regime soil sure unless
You grow great crops in great soil. And the soil is the commons. Increasingly, we have monopolistic companies that try to take as much as they can for themselves. And we have a patent and copyright regime that makes sure that nothing goes back into the commons unless by an extraordinary act of generosity. This is not fertile soil for innovation.
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The thing we should all be looking for are people who want to make a difference. I'm a big believer in the Silicon Valley religion of the power of markets. But I also believe in our obligation to give back, and to give back in the way we do business, to create more value than we capture for ourselves.
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We were the first people to do advertising on the Web. I actually saw in 1993 that the ad could be the content, the destination.
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This whole idea of visibility by the public creates a pretty powerful lever. In the new transparency era, you are able to make change you would otherwise have difficulty making. It's no longer possible for somebody just to bury the problem. It's the reason why things like WikiLeaks are important.
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I like to think that even if we make some really bad choices and go down some bad paths, we'll eventually emerge from it.
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My original business model - I actually wrote this down - was 'interesting work for interesting people.'
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Conferences are really like parties, and an A-list party is one where A-list people are in attendance. You figure out who are the really important people to invite and get them to show up as speakers or as guests. Then everybody wants to be there. If you don't know who the important people are, you shouldn't be doing a conference.
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Why did Google, for example, recently decide to offer free 411 service? I haven't talked to people at Google, but it's pretty clear to me why. It's because of speech recognition. It has nothing to do with 411 service: it has to do with getting a database of voices, so they don't have to license speech technology from Nuance or someone else.
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Amazon is now the definitive source for data about whole sets of products - fungible consumer products. EBay is the authoritative source for the secondary market of those products. Google is the authority for information about facts, but they're relatively undifferentiated.
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Just as the PC bled back into industrial economy, I think the Internet is going to bleed back into our overall economy and have a transformative effect on major sectors that we don't yet foresee.
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If you are extremely well known and have a very desirable product, then yes, you probably do suffer a bit from piracy, in the same way that if you make a lot of money, you pay more in taxes than if you don't make any money.
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I personally own six or seven thousand books, so I - and I certainly don't want to see them go away.
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I have to say there are a lot of me-too products and companies. Yet another social network, of the 15th flavor - that's common in every new technology revolution. There are imitators who have marginal improvements.
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I'd love to have the time to learn to sing opera properly rather than bellowing half-formed fragments of melody in exuberant moments.