O'Reilly Media

Company

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. In 1992, O'Reilly Media published one of the first popular books about the Internet, Ed Krol's Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog. O'Reilly Media also created the first web portal, the Global Network Navigator ("GNN") in 1993; it 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.

The firm is now widely recognized for the conferences and summits it organizes. In 1997, O'Reilly launched The Perl Conference to raise the profile of 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."

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. In 2013, O’Reilly acquired Pearson’s interest in the joint venture, and it is now a wholly owned subsidiary of O’Reilly Media, based in Boston, MA. Safari is the largest and most successful online library of reference and learning content for technical and business topics available on the internet, with millions of users through B2C, B2B, and library channels. 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. This 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.

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. 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. 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. O'Reilly has adopted Creative Commons' Founders Copyright, which limits the maximum term of copyright protection to 28 years; it is much shorter than the current default duration of the monopoly in copyright law. For many years the most typical O'Reilly books, the "animal books", have been designed as thorough guides for work with established technologies. The original animal design was developed by Edie Freedman because she thought that Unix program names sounded like "weird animals".

Conferences

O'Reilly began its conference division in 1997. Today, the company offers over one dozen conferences:

Discontinued

Magazines

Since 2005, O'Reilly has published a quarterly magazine known as Make: technology on your time. The magazine contains articles on hardware hacking, as well as several technology-related do-it-yourself (DIY) instructions for hobbyists, and was later adapted into a television series by Twin Cities Public Television. In the fall of 2006, O'Reilly added a second magazine, Craft:, with the tagline "Transforming Traditional Crafts." Craft magazine folded in 2009.

Ventures

Over the years O'Reilly tried many other types of products. In 1993, they launched one of the first Web-based resources, Global Network Navigator, which was sold to AOL in 1995. Around that time, they started two short-lived book lines: one of travel books (including Travelers' Tales Mexico) and one of general business books (including Love Your Job! and Building a Successful Software Business). They produced an audiotape version of the interview show Geek of the Week by Internet Talk Radio. They sold Windows based software for six years, including the first commercially available Web server, Web Site.

O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures is a venture capital fund focusing on software, cleantech and other emerging trends.