Response to Dave Winer on O'Reilly Investment in Pyra

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Tim O'Reilly
Aug. 23, 2000 08:58 PM
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Last night, right after seeing Dave Winer's comments about O'Reilly's investment in Pyra, I sent Dave some mail. Since Dave seems to like this stuff out in the open, I thought I'd include a copy of the mail in my weblog. Here's what I wrote:

Dave...So far, I've seen three versions of your comments on scripting.com (below). At least the latest is the mildest, which I appreciate, since the first, full-blown version is pretty extreme. I assume that this means you're reconsidering your initial reaction.

FYI, you're right that it would have been a good idea for someone to let you know we'd invested in pyra. Frankly, I assumed you knew, since you've frequently made a big point on scripting news what a big tent you had, and how happy you were to share ideas and "flow" with Evan. You seem to talk with Evan more often than we do. I never got the feeling that you believed Pyra was a competitor who you were worried about, and were interested in hiding info from. Nor was I aware that there were any "secrets" you were sharing with us, since you make such a big point about how everything you do is in the open. If you had let us know that you had secrets, or that Pyra was someone you were worried about, that would have certainly raised a flag to us.

And while you may like to think that there's something nefarious here, I had the opposite reaction, when I learned that Dale was adopting Manila: "Why are we using Manila if we're investing in Pyra? Shouldn't we be putting our money where our mouth is?" The answer was that blogger didn't work for our purposes, because of Evan's business model of a centralized service that only ran on his site. We had two separate business activities: investing in spaces and people that we think are interesting, and running web sites. We made different choices in each case. As you may recall, we also talked with you about investing in Userland, but things broke down because we're an early stage investor, and your valuation was too high. We think that there's room for both you and Evan to prosper, if you guys can figure out a business model that works.

We certainly weren't using Manila to get info to feed to Pyra! I don't think that there's been any info transmission that way; certainly less than there has been directly between you and Evan, or by Evan looking at your site.

At O'Reilly, we wear a lot of hats. We publish books about Perl, but we also publish books about Python and VB and Java (and soon C#). We publish books about Linux and Unix, but we also publish books about Windows and the Mac. We run a conference on Perl but we also run one on Java. We promote and use Apache but our software group publishes its own NT-based web server (WebSite) and discussion forums product (WebBoard). People in each of those camps sometimes think of us as a traitor because we work with the others. We like some technologies more than others, but in each case, we try to say why. We also try very hard to let our various groups work independently. Our Windows/VB programming publishing group is free to promote VB at the same time as our Perl publishing group promotes Perl.

As to your comment, "While we were working with O'Reilly, at times very intensely, and always for free, they were betting on our competitor", I could turn that around, and point out that we were giving you lots of feedback (also for free), and trying to help you make your product better. I could see Evan (or Mark Jacobsen, who runs our venture group) getting steamed about this, saying, "Why is O'Reilly undercutting its investment in Pyra by using and promoting Manila, and giving Userland feedback about how to make it better?" Heck, if we'd been using Blogger, Evan and Meg would have had the benefit of that feedback. I don't know what it is you think you lost by our working together.

In the end, we may end up using something else again for weblog functionality if neither product meets our needs. Personally, I see great features in each product, as well as in the various slashdot clones (slash, squishdot). None of them is perfect, though. We're going to keep experimenting till we get what we want, but there's nothing nefarious in this. If Manila is the best product, we'll use it. If Pyra is, we'll us it. If slash or squishdot offers some better features, we may switch.

Anyway, I'm sorry that this was so distressing to you. No harm was intended, and I don't think any was caused.

First version of Dave's comments:

> -- This evening I learned from
> Evan Williams that O'Reilly has invested in Pyra. Someone should have told
> us, as we were disclosing our plans to O'Reilly, and while we were wasting
> time working on their website, and working on RSS for Dale, at least a
> half-dozen projects over the last year. Pyra makes Blogger which competes
> head-on with Manila. We should have had the chance to make a decision
> about sharing our secrets with O'Reilly, based on this important
> information. I still don't know when the investment happened. This makes
> me wonder what other surprises are lurking out there, all because we
> trusted O'Reilly. It also gives me a sick feeling in my stomach and a real
> spirit of to get competitive quickly. You know, we work really hard at
> UserLand, and we're totally generous. I think of the effort we wasted on
> O'Reilly, while they were betting on our competitor, work that could have
> gone into more features for our users. So selfish of O'Reilly to
> manipulate us this way. This hurts so much you can't believe.

Second version:

> This evening I learned that O'Reilly invested in Pyra, who makes Blogger,
> which competes head-on with Manila. While we were working with O'Reilly,
> at times very intensely, and always for free, they were betting on our
> competitor. Needless to say this should have been disclosed. I have a very
> sick feeling in my stomach this evening, this hurts so much you can't
> believe. BTW, O'Reilly is a much bigger company than UserLand. I feel so
> damned used.

Third version:

> This evening I learned that O'Reilly invested in Pyra, who
> makes Blogger, which competes head-on with Manila.
> While we were working with O'Reilly, at times very
> intensely, and always for free, they were betting on our
> competitor. Needless to say this should have been
> disclosed.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to Foo Camps ("Friends of O'Reilly" Camps, which gave rise to the "un-conference" movement), O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Gov 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Expo. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim's long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. In addition to O'Reilly Media, Tim is a founder of Safari Books Online, a pioneering subscription service for accessing books online, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, an early-stage venture firm.

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