Win-wins

A brief history of my relationship with O'Reilly. I first met Tim at an Esther Dyson conference in the 90s. He came up to me, smiling, and shook my hand. We had a good conversation. We met again, some time later at a Mac conference, again a cordial meeting, and we decided to work together on an O'Reilly book about a piece of software I wrote. I met Dale Dougherty to talk about RSS in 1999 or 2000. More cordiality. More working together. Goodness.

Then something soured. Who cares why. A war of words on the Internet. Then things calmed down to a cold war. Then I got sick, really sick, and they extended a really sweet olive branch, which I accepted. This was unique. Even my friends didn't go so far out of their way to wish me well. They may think men are supposed to Take It Like A Man. Well, some things don't work that way. It was a wonderful symbolic gesture. Some things transcend enmity. Thanks.

Before that, we were already working on repairing the relationship. I was invited to one of their Open Source Summits. I thought it went pretty well. During a break I gave Tim a handshake and a hug. Tim said we're really not that far apart. We're not. On almost everything that matters we are in full agreement.

Then, inexplicably, they had an invite-only conference that I honestly think I should have been invited to, not just because many of the other people they invited were people I work with, but since it was a conference of their friends, I thought I would be included, after all the work we had done to try to repair the relationship, I honestly thought I would be included as a friend of O'Reilly. I don't know what happened.

I don't want another cold war. I just had another one of those Life's Too Short reminders when my uncle died suddenly, of the disease that I have. I think O'Reilly got that wake up call too, because one of their most beloved people, Frank Willison, died suddenly of the same disease.

As I get older, I keep getting reminders that there's less time to correct mistakes, so I strive to make fewer. Missing an opportunity for the progress that could have happened if I had been at the Foo Camp was one of those mistakes. I don't care if O'Reilly sees it as a mistake or not, I do. I know some of my friends do.

So I refuse to be mad at O'Reilly. We need more working together. Personal animus is a total waste of energy. Let's not be wasteful. None of us have that much time. They're not going away soon, and with any luck, neither am I (praise Murphy). We have big fish to fry. Okay this was a setback. Let's focus on forward motion now.

I'm glad I wrote The Rule of Win-Win before this happened. We need to have a summit not about technology but about philosophy. We need to talk about what we're doing on the Web, all of us. Maybe we're not all doing the same thing, or maybe we are. Let's find out.