Tim O'Reilly

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For the musician, see Tim O'Reilly (musician).

Tim O'Reilly at the MIX06 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada

Tim O'Reilly (born 1954, Cork, Ireland) is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) and supporter of the free software and open source movements. O'Reilly was initially interested in literature upon graduating 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. Tim 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." Tim is on the board of CollabNet, and was on the board of Macromedia until its 2005 merger with Adobe.

In 2001, Tim was involved in a dispute with Amazon.com, leading a protest against Amazon's one-click patent, and specifically, Amazon's offensive use of that patent against rival barnesandnoble.com. The protest ended with Tim and Jeff Bezos visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform. Amazon has continued to file many patents, and the Barnes & Noble case was settled. As of 2006, Amazon has not repeated the events by suing for patent infringement.

In December of 2006, O'Reilly's publishing firm donated $10,000 to Creative Commons which demonstrates his interest in Free Culture.