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
control fit lead life pattern work
I wanted more control of my life. I wanted work to fit in, not to dominate; to support, not to lead the pattern of my life.
alone battle churchill glorious glory good greater life owed pilots service whom winston worth
A short, glorious life in service of a greater good - say, the life of the Spartans at Thermopylae, or the pilots in the Battle of Britain, of whom Winston Churchill said 'Never have so many owed so much to so few,' - that is worth praising. But for glory alone? I think not.
believe beneath dynamics good lays life people social work
I believe people are fundamentally good and want to find things that make life better for themselves. There are social dynamics for people that work, and there are ones that are pathological. But beneath every 'no' lays a 'yes' that had never been broken. I put my life-faith in that.
gas-stations life-is gas
Life is not a tour of gas stations.
experience publishers recreate saying
I see publishers bemoaning their fate and saying that this is the end of publishing. No! Publishers will recreate themselves. Some of that comes from my experience as a print publisher.
appetites deeply defined influenced rather virtue
I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.
became companies dominant grew microsoft model oracle
Proprietary software grew up, starting really in the 1980s, as an alternative and that became the dominant model with the rise of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and the like.
business chewed everybody extract gets goes government model money opposition possible run senior somewhat whose
Everybody who goes into government gets somewhat chewed up in the process. Being a senior appointee is like being at a startup, only more so: You run into opposition from the entrenched oligopoly of contractors whose business model is to extract as much money from government as possible for doing as little as possible.
business change company conference helps knowledge spreading
At O'Reilly, the way we think about our business is that we're not a publisher; we're not a conference producer; we're a company that helps change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
age broke bubble invested left next people technology virtually
Virtually every real breakthrough in technology had a bubble which burst, left a lot of people broke who'd invested in it, but also left the infrastructure for this next golden age, effectively.
came develop saw services
I came up with the idea that I wanted to develop products because I saw services businesses being a dead end long term.
believe human motive share
I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive.
burst close companies dominant ecosystem friendly less time
So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in.
creation pc require services shift software web
One of the big changes at the heart of Web 2.0 is the shift from the creation of software artifacts, which is what the PC revolution was about, to the creation of software services. These are services that ultimately, if they are successful, will require competencies of operation, of scale, and the like.