Thursday, April 24, 2008

Web 2.0

Tim O'Reilly happens to be the founder of O'Reilly Media is a and a supporter of the free software and open source movements. He is widely credited with coining the term Web 2.0.

O'Reilly was initially interested in literature upon graduating from high school, but after graduating from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics he became involved in the field of computer manuals. He defines his company not as a book or online publisher, or as a conference producer (though the company does all three), but as a technology transfer company, "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators." O'Reilly is on the board of CollabNet, and was on the board of Macromedia until its 2005 merger with Adobe. In March 2007, he joined MySQL AB’s Board of Directors.

In 2001, Tim O’Reilly was involved in a dispute with Amazon.com, leading a protest against Amazon's one-click patent, and specifically, Amazon's assertion of that patent against rival barnesandnoble.com. The protest ended with O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

O'Reilly talks about web 2.0, which is about the free flow of information however some would argue that he seeks to be squeezing every penny out of it. Lately he has reportedly contacted his old boys network at that major search engine compnay to cut off support for a holding web 2.0 conferences that are priced at a fraction of his conference.

This is a sponsored post. SB

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