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O’Reily’s Web Blah-Blah-Blah

Posted on May 27, 2006
Filed Under Conferences, Personal Posts |

Yes it looks like open season on Tim O’Reilly as his company defends a trademark for Web 2.0 Conferences, which to many minds seems diametrically opposite to the openness that Web 2.0 should be all about.

You know what? I think Tim’s going to come back on Tuesday from his convenient vacation, damp down the fires, but is going to stand alongside the mark and the letter. Because first of all, he’s a businessman, and if you start having a million Web 2.0 conferences that dilute the potential of O’Reilly Media Conferences to make money, then you’re kinda scuppered from a cashflow perspective. Balancing that between the needs of the one [company] and the needs of the many [the internet] is tricky, and they might have overstepped a little, but I don’t see any sort of donating the Web 2.0 Conference mark to the community. A loss of goodwill from a very vocal minority, but that’s to be expected.

Note there is no claim on Web 2.0 in books, application design, marketing, etc. Just for conferences.

One site (and I wish I could find it again) said he’d offer 1000-1 odds on Tim coming back and standing by the decision. I’ll happily put ten pounds down on those odds. The revolution may be here, but you still need money. I’m sure that O’Reilly Media is a business, so in that sense, this is the correct decision. How much of that they’re willing to give away will determine just how much control Tim still has. Personally? This is a mighty bad call - they should have noted this mark a lot sooner, and allowed anyone to use it in exchange for a note that “the organisers are not affiliated with O’Reilly Media.”

AN open terminology, with attribution. Is’;t that what they preach? Isn’t that what they should practice?