O'Reilly Media

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O'Reilly Media
O Reilly Media logo.svg
Founded 1978; 39 years ago (1978)
Founder Tim O'Reilly
Country of origin United States
Headquarters location Sebastopol, California
Publication types books, magazines
Official website www.oreilly.com

O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American media company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books and Web sites and produces conferences on computer technology topics. Their distinctive brand features a woodcut of an animal on many of their book covers.

Company[edit]

Early days[edit]

O'Reilly Media is best known for its color-coded "Animal Books".

The company began in 1978 as a private consulting firm doing technical writing, based in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area. In 1984, it began to retain publishing rights on manuals created for Unix vendors. A few 70-page "Nutshell Handbooks" were well-received, but the focus remained on the consulting business until 1988. After a conference displaying O'Reilly's preliminary Xlib manuals attracted significant attention, the company began increasing production of manuals and books. The original cover art were animal designs developed by Edie Freedman because she thought that Unix program names sounded like "weird animals".[1]

Global Network Navigator[edit]

In 1993 O'Reilly Media created the first web portal, when they launched one of the first Web-based resources, Global Network Navigator.[1] GNN was sold to AOL in 1995, one of the first large transactions of the dot-com bubble. GNN was the first site on the World Wide Web to feature paid advertising.[2]

Conferences[edit]

Though O'Reilly Media got its start in publishing, roughly two decades after its genesis the company expanded into event production. In 1997, O'Reilly launched The Perl Conference to cross-promote its books on the Perl programming language. Many of the company's other software bestsellers were also on topics that were off the radar of the commercial software industry. In 1998, O'Reilly invited many of the leaders of software projects to a meeting. Originally called the freeware summit, the meeting became known as the Open Source Summit. The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (which includes the Perl conference) is now one of O'Reilly's flagship events. Other key events include the Strata Conference on big data, the Velocity Conference on Web Performance and Operations, and FOO Camp. Past events of note include the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference and the Web 2.0 Summit. Overall, O'Reilly describes its business not as publishing or conferences, but as "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators."[3]

Today, the company offers over one dozen conferences:[4]

  • Strata + Hadoop World (4x annually around the world)[5]
  • OSCON (O'Reilly Open Source Convention)
  • Fluent[6]
  • Velocity (Web Performance & Operations) (4x annually around the world)
  • The Next:Economy Summit[7]
  • The Next:Money Summit[8]
  • The Solid Conference[9]
  • The O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference[10]
  • The O'Reilly Design Conference[11]

Discontinued conferences[edit]

O'Reilly Network[edit]

In the late 1990s, O'Reilly founded the O'Reilly Network, which grew to include sites such as:

  • LinuxDevCenter.com
  • MacDevCenter.com
  • WindowsDevCenter.com
  • ONLamp.com
  • O'Reilly Radar

In 2008 the company revised its online model and stopped publishing on several of its sites (including Codezoo and O'Reilly Connection).[16] The company also produced dev2dev (a WebLogic-oriented site) in association with BEA and java.net (an open-source community for Java programmers) in association with Sun Microsystems and CollabNet.

Safari[edit]

In 2001, O’Reilly launched Safari Books Online, a subscription based service providing access to ebooks (and now also video training) as a joint venture with the Pearson Technology Group. Safari Books Online includes books and video from Adobe Press, Alpha Books, Cisco Press, FT Press, Microsoft Press, New Riders Publishing, O'Reilly, Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall, Prentice Hall PTR, Que and Sams Publishing.

In 2014, O'Reilly Media acquired Pearson's stake, making Safari Books Online a wholly owned subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.[17] O'Reilly did a redesign of the site and has some success in the attempt to expand beyond Safari's core B2C market into the B2B Enterprise market.

Web 2.0 phrase[edit]

In 2003, after the dot com bust, O’Reilly’s corporate goal was to reignite enthusiasm in the computer industry. Dale Dougherty, an executive at O’Reilly, coined the phrase "Web 2.0" during a brainstorming session.[18] Though Tim O'Reilly is often described as the person who coined the phrase Web 2.0, it is well documented that the phrase was Dougherty's idea. Web 2.0 then became the name for the Web 2.0 Summit run by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb (formerly CMP Media). CMP registered Web 2.0 as a Service Mark "for arranging and conducting live events, namely trade shows, expositions, business conferences and educational conferences in various fields of computers and information technology." Web 2.0 framed what distinguished the companies that survived the dot com bust from those that died, and identified key drivers of future success, including what is now called “cloud computing,” big data, and new approaches to iterative, data-driven software development.

The tarsier featured on the cover of Learning the vi Editor has been incorporated into the O'Reilly logo.

In May 2006 CMP Media learned of an impending event called the "Web 2.0 Half day conference." Concerned over their obligation to take reasonable means to enforce their trade and service marks CMP sent a cease and desist letter to the non-profit Irish organizers of the event. This attempt to restrict through legal mechanisms the use of the term was criticized by some. The legal issue was resolved by O'Reilly's apologizing for the early and aggressive involvement of attorneys, rather than simply calling the organizers, and allowing them to use the service mark for this single event.[19]

Make Magazine and Craft Magazine[edit]

In 2004, the company named the "Maker Movement" with the launch of Make (magazine), and in 2005, Maker Faire. Today, the flagship Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA, draws over 130,000 attendees. Other Faires around the world collectively draw millions.[20] In 2012, O’Reilly Media spun out the Make properties into a separate venture-backed company, Maker Media, headed up by former O’Reilly executive and Make founder Dale Dougherty.[21]

In the fall of 2006, O'Reilly added a second magazine, Craft:, with the tagline "Transforming Traditional Crafts." Craft magazine folded in 2009.

Post Tim O'Reilly era[edit]

In 2011 Tim O'Reilly stepped down from his day-to-day duties as O'Reilly Media CEO to focus his energy and attention on the Gov 2.0 movement. Since then, the company has been run by Laura Baldwin. Baldwin comes from a finance and consulting background rather than from a computer programming background and has been credited with turning the company around financially by making the O'Reilly conferences commercially successful.

Infinite Skills acquisition[edit]

In 2014 O'Reilly acquired Infinite Skills, a Canadian publisher of online and DVD video courses.[22]

Licensing[edit]

O'Reilly uses Creative Commons' Founders Copyright, which grants the company exclusive use of content produced by the authors who sign with them for 28 years. Though it is shorter than the current default duration of the monopoly in copyright law, it is still quite restrictive compared with other, wide-used, licenses offered by Creative Commons.[23]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Levy, Steven (October 2005). "The Trend Spotter". Wired. Condé Nast. Retrieved 27 April 2014. 
  2. ^ "The History of Online Advertising". AdPushup. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  3. ^ "Reflections on our First 25 Years". 22 October 2014. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  4. ^ "Conferences - O'Reilly Media". 16 May 2014. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  5. ^ "Strata + Hadoop World". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  6. ^ "JavaScript, HTML5 & CSS conference: O'Reilly Fluent, March 07 - 10, 2016, San Francisco, CA". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  7. ^ "Future of business conference: Next:Economy, November 12 - 13, 2015, San Francisco, CA". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  8. ^ "Conferences - O'Reilly Media". 16 May 2014. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  9. ^ "Hardware, Software & the Internet of Things, O'Reilly Solid, June 23 - 25, 2015, San Francisco, CA". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  10. ^ "O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference April 10 - 13, 2016, New York, NY". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  11. ^ "UX, IoT & interaction conference: O'Reilly Design, January 19 - 22, 2016, San Francisco, CA". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  12. ^ "O'Reilly Peer to Peer Conference". 2001. Archived from the original on January 21, 2003. 
  13. ^ "O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference". Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  14. ^ O'Reilly, Tim (2 May 2013). "Ending the TOC Conference, But Still Pushing Tools of Change for Publishing". O'Reilly Media. Retrieved 27 September 2014. 
  15. ^ O'Reilly, Tim (31 July 2015). "we will be phasing out the O'Reilly School of Technology, and are no longer accepting new enrollments". O'Reilly Media. Retrieved 31 July 2015. 
  16. ^ "Codezoo and Connection landing page". Oreilly.com. 2007-10-03. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  17. ^ "O’Reilly purchases Pearson’s stake in Safari". O'Reilly Media. 4 August 2014. 
  18. ^ "How Web 2.0 Works". HowStuffWorks. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  19. ^ Ivry, Sara (May 29, 2006). "Squabble Over Name Ruffles a Web Utopia". New York Times. 
  20. ^ "Maker Faire - Make a Maker Faire - Maker Faire". Maker Faire. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  21. ^ O'Reilly, Tim (January 24, 2013). "Why We Spun Out Maker Media". O'Reilly Media. 
  22. ^ Kayla Baum. "Announcement: Infinite Skills Has Been Acquired by O’Reilly Media!". Infinite Skills Training Videos. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 
  23. ^ "O'Reilly First to Adopt Founders' Copyright: Publisher Restores Balance to Copyright with New Legal Option from Creative Commons". 23 April 2003. Retrieved 1 May 2016. 

External links[edit]

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