People Who Need People

Eight Million Ways to Get Involved: OReilly.com

The technology books that Sebastopol, Calif.-based O'Reilly& Associates publish (the ones with the cute animal drawingson their covers) are geared toward a very specificgroup - software developers. So it would make sense forO'Reilly to have some sort of community forum on its 8million-page site. Or would it?

"There are already great forums existing on the Web fordevelopers - Usenet News, for example," says Allen Noren,director of Web services. "It's not worth our effort to tryto replicate those." So instead of supporting a chat room ora bulletin board, O'Reilly takes a different approach tobuilding a community on its site: It takes on politicalissues.

For example, about two years ago, Tim O'Reilly, founder ofthe company, spoke out against the lawsuit Amazon.com filedagainst Barnesandnoble.com for using a feature similar toAmazon.com's patented one-click ordering tool. O'Reillydidn't think it was fair for Amazon.com to patentopen-source tools that it acquired only because those toolswere freely available in the first place.

On Feb. 28, 2000, he posted an open letter to Amazon.com onOReilly.com. At the end of the letter, O'Reilly invited sitevisitors who opposed the patenting of software applicationsto type their name onto a petition. O'Reilly says thepetition accumulated 10,000 signatures in 60 hours andpersuaded Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos to rethink his company'sstrategy. And although that admission didn't stop Amazon.comfrom pursuing its suit (which was decided in its favor),according to O'Reilly, Amazon.com ceased trying to patentother applications and business processes.