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EXCERPT FROM THE 2002 AWARD CEREMONY PROGRAM: 

Tim O’Reilly is founder and president of O’Reilly & Associates, thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to publishing pioneering books like Ed Krol’s The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog (selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century), O’Reilly has also been a pioneer in the popularization of the Internet. O’Reilly’s Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first Web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.

O’Reilly continues to pioneer new content developments on the Web via its O’Reilly Network affiliate, which also manages sites such as
www.perl.com and xml.com. O’Reilly’s conference arm hosts the popular Perl Conference, the Open Source Software Convention, and the O’Reilly
Emerging Technology Conference. Tim has been an activist for Internet standards and for Open Source software. He has led successful public relations campaigns on behalf of key Internet technologies, helping to block Microsoft’s 1996 limits on TCP/IP in NT Workstation, organizing the “summit” of key free software leaders where the term “Open Source” was first widely agreed upon, and, most recently, organizing a series of protests against frivolous software patents. Tim received Infoworld’s Industry Achievement Award in 1998 for his advocacy on behalf of the Open Source community.

Tim has written numerous books on computer topics, most notably UNIX Text Processing (with Dale Dougherty; Howard Sams, 1987), Managing UUCP and USENET (with Grace Todino; no longer in print), The X Window System Users’ Guide (with Valerie Quercia), The X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual (with Adrian Nye), UNIX Power Tools (with Jerry Peek and Mike Loukides) and Windows 98 in a Nutshell (with Troy Mott and Walter Glenn).

As an O’Reilly & Associates editor he has had a major hand in the development of many of the company’s other titles, including UNIX in a Nutshell, Programming Perl, Sendmail, Essential System Administration, and The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Tim has served on the board of trustees for both the Internet Society and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two organizations devoted to making sure that the Internet fulfills its promise. He is on the boards of CollabNet, ActiveState Tool Corp, and Webb, Inc. (part of Jabber.com).

Tim graduated from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics. His honors thesis explored the tension between mysticism and logic in Plato's dialogues.

VIEW THE PROGRAM FROM THE 2002 AWARD CEREMONY FEATURING AN EXTENDED BIOGRAPHY AND MORE