The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity. Tim O'Reilly More Quotes by Tim O'Reilly More Quotes From Tim O'Reilly When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking. Tim O'Reilly people ideas thinking A key function of a publishing brand is the bestowal of status by who and what you pay attention to. Tim O'Reilly keys pay attention A short, glorious life in service of a greater good - say, the life of the Spartans at Thermopylae, or the pilots in the Battle of Britain, of whom Winston Churchill said 'Never have so many owed so much to so few,' - that is worth praising. But for glory alone? I think not. Tim O'Reilly alone good service life Everybody who goes into government gets somewhat chewed up in the process. Being a senior appointee is like being at a startup, only more so: You run into opposition from the entrenched oligopoly of contractors whose business model is to extract as much money from government as possible for doing as little as possible. Tim O'Reilly you government money business I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it. Tim O'Reilly control better you practice At O'Reilly, the way we think about our business is that we're not a publisher; we're not a conference producer; we're a company that helps change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. Tim O'Reilly business change world knowledge If you are extremely well known and have a very desirable product, then yes, you probably do suffer a bit from piracy, in the same way that if you make a lot of money, you pay more in taxes than if you don't make any money. Tim O'Reilly more you money way One of O'Reilly's advantages is that we have a network of thousands of user groups to whom we give free books, to whom we advertise our products, and they spread the word. If you don't have that database, it's hard to get the attention of the market. Tim O'Reilly free you hard attention I like to think that even if we make some really bad choices and go down some bad paths, we'll eventually emerge from it. Tim O'Reilly down bad think choices Proprietary software grew up, starting really in the 1980s, as an alternative and that became the dominant model with the rise of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and the like. Tim O'Reilly rise like up software I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive. Tim O'Reilly sharing think powerful believe Who was the first person to fly across the Atlantic? Lindbergh. Who was the second? No idea. Tim O'Reilly fly person first who I came up with the idea that I wanted to develop products because I saw services businesses being a dead end long term. Tim O'Reilly dead end being long I find that creative streak I think often leads in programmers to be good predictors of where culture as a whole is going to go. And that is where I think I've tried over the years to in some ways use my customers as a filter or a predictor of where technology as a whole is going to go. Or where the world as a whole is going to go. Tim O'Reilly good technology culture world So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in. Tim O'Reilly down innovation opportunity time If companies don't think systemically enough - if they try to capture too much of the value - eventually, innovation moves somewhere else. Tim O'Reilly value try think innovation
