20 Facts About Tim O'Reilly

Timothy O'Reilly was born on 6 June 1954 and is an Irish-American author and publisher, who is the founder of O'Reilly Media.

Tim O'Reilly popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0.

Tim O'Reilly wrote a well-received book on the science fiction writer Frank Herbert and edited a collection of Herbert's essays and interviews.

Tim O'Reilly 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.

In 1989, Tim 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.

Tim O'Reilly serves on the board of directors of three companies: Safari Books Online, Maker Media, and PeerJ.

Tim O'Reilly served on the board of Macromedia until its 2005 merger with Adobe Systems, and on the board of MySQL AB until its sale to Sun Microsystems.

Tim O'Reilly serves on the board of directors for Code for America.

In 2001, Tim O'Reilly was involved in a dispute with Amazon.

In 1998, Tim O'Reilly helped rebrand free software under the term open source.

Tim O'Reilly is concerned about trends towards new forms of lock-in.

Dale Dougherty, an executive at Tim O'Reilly, invoked the phrase "Web 2.0" during a brainstorming session.

Tim 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.

Tim 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.

Tim O'Reilly envisions the Internet Operating System as consisting of various sub systems, such as media, payment, speech recognition, location, and identity.

Tim O'Reilly uses the analogy of the biome of the human body having more bacterial than human cells, but depending upon millions of other organisms each pursuing their own interest but nevertheless weaving a co-operative web.

Tim O'Reilly has been propagating the notion of "government as platform", or "Gov 2.0".

Tim O'Reilly is considered the most enthusiastic promoter of algorithmic regulation, the ongoing monitoring and modification of government policies via open data feedback.

In 2001, Tim 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.

On 11 April 2015 Tim O'Reilly married Jennifer Pahlka, a former Deputy CTO of the US, and Founder and former Executive Director of Code for America.