View source for Tim O'Reilly

{{outdated|2007}}
Timothy O'Reilly, born 1954 in Cork, Ireland, is the director of O'Reilly Media (formally O'Reilly & Associates), and a notable proponent of the ideas of free, [[open source]], software, and the [[Web 2.0]] movement. On the board of [[Macromedia]] until it merged with [[Adobe]] in 2005, he has responsible for a large amount of software design.

In 2001, he also initiated a dispute with the online book-store Amazon, which he claimed was filing offensive [[patent]]s against rival companies, arguing that it was trying to stifle the free-flow of ideas.  On this subject, he said

{{cquote|The Net is so evanescent—there's no archive. It's very likely that there's not much evidence of that first use [of a given technology]}}

This dispute ended with an agreement with Amazon that it would no longer file patents in this way. 

O'Reilly is also a prominent figure in the worlds of [[blog]]ging and [[wiki]] software; with [[Jimbo Wales]], he created the controversial [[Civility Enforced|Internet Civility Code of Conduct]].

[[Category:Technology Commentators]]