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| Founded | 1978; 47 years ago (1978) |
|---|---|
| Founder | Tim O'Reilly |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Sebastopol, California |
| Distribution | Ingram Publisher Services[1] |
| Publication types | books,videos |
| Official website | www |
O'Reilly Media, Inc. (formerlyO'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established byTim O'Reilly that provides technical and professional skills development courses via anonline learning platform. O'Reilly alsopublishes books about programming and other technical content. Its distinctive brand features awoodcut of an animal on many of its book covers. The company was known as a popular tech conference organizer for more than 20 years before closing the live conferences arm of its business.[2]
The company began in 1978 as a private consulting firm doingtechnical writing, based in theCambridge, Massachusetts area. In 1984, it began to retain publishing rights on manuals created forUnix 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 preliminaryXlib manuals attracted significant attention, the company began increasing production of manuals and books. The original cover art consisted of animal designs developed by Edie Freedman because she thought that Unix program names sounded like "weird animals".[3]
In 1993 O'Reilly Media created the firstweb portal, when they launched one of the first Web-based resources,Global Network Navigator (GNN).[3] GNN was sold toAOL in 1995, in one of the first large transactions of thedot-com bubble. GNN was the first site on the World Wide Web to feature paid advertising.[4]
From 1997 to 2020, O'Reilly was known for producing tech conferences focused on areas ranging from software architecture, AI,big data, web development, design and more.
In March 2020, O'Reilly announced they would be closing the live conferences arm of their business.[2]
Although 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 thePerl programming language. Many of the company's other software bestsellers were also on topics that did not attract much attention of the commercial software industry. In 1998, O'Reilly invited many of the leaders of software projects to a meeting. Originally called thefreeware summit, the meeting became known as theOpen Source Summit. TheO'Reilly Open Source Convention (which includes the Perl conference) was 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, andFOO Camp. Past events of note include theO'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference and theWeb 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."[5]
In the late 1990s, O'Reilly founded the O'Reilly Network, which grew to include sites such as:
In 2008 the company revised its online model and stopped publishing on several of its sites (including Codezoo and O'Reilly Connection).[9] The company also produced dev2dev (a WebLogic-oriented site) in association withBEA and java.net (an open-source community for Java programmers) in association with Sun Microsystems andCollabNet.
In 2001, O'Reilly launched Safari Books Online, a subscription-based service providing access toebooks and videos as a joint venture with thePearson Technology Group. The platform includes content from O'Reilly and over 200 publishers includingAdobe Press,Alpha Books,Cisco Press,FT Press,Microsoft Press,New Riders Publishing,Packt,Peachpit Press,Prentice Hall,Prentice Hall PTR,Que andSams Publishing.
In 2014, O'Reilly Media acquired Pearson's stake, making Safari Books Online a wholly owned subsidiary of O'Reilly Media.[10] O'Reilly did a redesign of the site and had success in expanding beyond Safari's core B2C market into the B2B Enterprise market.
In 2017, O'Reilly Media announced they were no longer selling books online, including ebooks. Instead, everyone was encouraged to sign up for Safari or purchase books through online retailers such as Amazon.[11]
In 2018, O'Reilly Media rebranded Safari to what is now O'Reilly online learning. The platform includes books, videos, live online training, O'Reilly conference videos, and more. In 2019, O'Reilly acquired Katacoda so users can experiment with code in the website itself.[12]
In 2003, after thedot com bust, O'Reilly's corporate goal was to reignite enthusiasm in the computer industry. To do this,Dale Dougherty andTim O'Reilly decided to use the term "Web 2.0" coined in January 1999 byDarcy DiNucci. The term was used 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 calledcloud computing, big data, and new approaches to iterative, data-driven software development.[citation needed]
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 acease 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.[13]
In January 2005 the company launchedMake: magazine and in 2006 it launchedMaker Faire. The flagship Maker Faire inSan Mateo, California, drew over 130,000 attendees. Other Faires around the world collectively draw millions.[14] 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.[15]
In the fall of 2006, O'Reilly added a second magazine,Craft:, with the tagline "Transforming Traditional Crafts."Craft: folded in 2009.
In the summer of 2019, Maker Media laid off its entire staff and ceased operations.[16]
Make Magazine is currently published by Make Community LLC.[17]
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 theGov 2.0 movement. Since then, the company has been run by Laura Baldwin. Baldwin comes from a finance and consulting background.
In 2014 O'Reilly acquired Infinite Skills, a Canadian publisher of online and DVD video courses.[18]
O'Reilly usesCreative Commons'Founders Copyright, which grants the company exclusive use of content produced by the authors who sign with them for 28 years. Although it is shorter than the current default duration of the monopoly incopyright law, it is still quite restrictive compared with other, widely used, licenses offered by Creative Commons.[19]
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