I really don't think that O'Reilly has jumped yet. I think organizations that make decisions to abandon their roots jump the shark. Or when they have exhausted the potential of their initial ideas and don't have new ones.

I don't think O'Reilly has abandoned its roots - even though there are probably branches that some of the initial readers probably don't recognize. But that's what happens to real trees - some branches grow thick and support other smaller ones - while others break off.

If I had to argue why O'Reilly hasn't jumped the shark yet, I would give the following reasons:

1. Tim O'Reilly is a real guy who you can say hi to - who actually posts his real thoughts online. He's not in this only for the money and he takes positions on issues that are sometimes better for the world than for publishers (like arguing against unreasonably lengthy copyright terms).

2. While the number of books that O'Reilly produces that are not absolutely outstanding grows every year - the important thing is that the number of books that are is *also* growing. As long as that's the case, I am grateful O'Reilly exists.

3. O'Reilly understands that there is a tipping point for quality in a venture that can put your product or service in a league of its own. They have proved this through books, through their networked technical posting/discussion sites - and now again with Safari. Safari is the best recent example. I love explaining to people what it is and why I use it. When I give them the pitch - they immediately assume that it's clunky, hard to read and hard to search - and that O'Reilly wouldn't really want it to succeed as it would eat away at book profits. That's when I get to say, "You don't understand. The service is FANTASTIC. It *is* easy to use, to navigate, and to search. It's so much better than what others have tried and failed to do - that you'll rely on it like I do."

So as long as Tim is a real, thinking guy, as long as his company keeps producing excellent books, and as long as they keep doing new things really, really well - I think that shark is a long way off.

Ed