Wikipedia

Tim Bray

Timothy William Bray(born June 21, 1955) is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the originalXMLspecification.[7]He worked forAmazon Web Servicesfrom December 2014 until May 2020 when he quit due to concerns over the terminating of whistleblowers.[8][9]Previously he has been employed byGoogle,Sun MicrosystemsandDigital Equipment Corporation (DEC).Bray has also founded or co-founded several start-ups such as Antarctica Systems.[10][11][12]

Tim Bray
Born(1955-06-21)June 21, 1955(age 69)
Fort Vermilion,Alberta,Canada
EducationUniversity of Guelph(BS)
Employers
Known for
SpouseLauren Wood
Websitewww.tbray.org/ongoing

Education and early life

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Bray was born on June 21, 1955[13]inAlberta,Canada where his father worked for the Dominion Experimental Farm Service inFort Vermilion.He grew up inBeirut,Lebanon, and returned to Canada to attend school at theUniversity of GuelphinGuelph,Ontario.[14]He graduated in 1981 with aBachelor of Science,double majoringin mathematics and computer Science. In 2009, he would return to Guelph to receive an honorary doctorate.[15]Tim described his switch of focus from math to computer science this way:

"In math I’d worked like a dog for my Cs, but in CS I worked much less for As—and learned that you got paid well for doing it."[16]

Career

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Bray joinedDigital Equipment Corporation(DEC) inTorontoas a software specialist. In 1983, Bray left DEC for Microtel Pacific Research. He joined the NewOxford English Dictionary (OED)project at theUniversity of Waterlooin 1987 as its manager.[17]It was during this time Bray worked withSGML,a technology that would later become central to bothOpen Text Corporationand his XML andAtom standardizationwork.[4][6]Bray co-foundedAntarctica Systems- in 2002, during his tenure as CEO for Antarctica, Bray was included inUpside magazine'selite 100list, alongside other IT leaders likeBill Gates,Steve Jobs,Michael DellandLarry Ellison.[18]Bray was director of Web Technologies atSun Microsystemsfrom early 2004 to early 2010.[2]He joinedGoogleas a developer advocate in 2010 focusing onAndroid,and then on technologies related toidentity,such asOAuthandOpenID.[4][5][6][19][20][21]He left Google in March 2014, unwilling to relocate toSilicon ValleyfromVancouver.[22]He started working forAmazon Web Services(AWS) in December 2014. Bray left AWS in May 2020, after being dismayed by Amazon's treatment ofwhistleblowerswho had raised concerns over the safety of warehouse workers in relation to theCOVID-19 pandemic.Bray had held thevice presidentrank, stating on his blog that "VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue", and had much praise for AWS, yet he wasn't pleased about his co-workers being fired.[23][24][8]

Bray's entrepreneurial activities include:

Waterloo Maple

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Bray served as the part-timechief executive officerofWaterloo Mapleduring 1989–1990. Waterloo Maple is the developer of theMaplemathematical software.

Open Text Corporation

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Bray left the new OED project in 1989 to co-foundOpen Text Corporationwith two colleagues. Open Text commercialised the search engine employed in the new OED project.

Bray recalled that “in 1994 I heard a conference speaker say that search engines would be big on the Internet, and in five seconds all the pieces just fell into place in my head. I realized that we could build such a thing with our technology.”[16]Thus in 1995, Open Text released the Open Text Index, one of the first popular commercialwebsearch engines.Open Text Corporation is publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol OTEX. From 1991 until 1996, Bray was senior vice president—technology'.

Textuality

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Bray, along with his wife Lauren Wood, ran Textuality,[25]a consulting practice in the field of web and publishing technology. He was contracted byNetscapein 1999, along withRamanathan V. Guha,[5]in part to create a new version of theMeta Content FrameworkcalledResource Description Framework,which used the XML language.

Antarctica Systems

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In 1999 he founded Antarctica Systems, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based company that specializes in visualization-based business analytics.

Web standards

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Bray has contributed to standards in technology, particularlyWeb standardsat theWorld Wide Web Consortium(W3C).

XML

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As an Invited Expert at theWorld Wide Web Consortiumbetween 1996 and 1999, Bray co-edited theXMLandXML namespacespecifications. Halfway through the project Bray accepted a consulting engagement withNetscape,provoking vociferous protests from Netscape competitorMicrosoft(who had supported the initial moves to bringSGMLto the web.)[citation needed]Bray was temporarily asked to resign the editorship. This led to intense dispute in the Working Group, eventually solved by the appointment of Microsoft'sJean Paolias third co-editor.

In 2001, Bray wrote an article calledTaxi to the Future[26]for Xml which proposed a means to improve web client user experience and web server system performance via aTransform-Aggregate-send XML-Interactarchitecture—this proposed system is very similar to theAjaxparadigm, popularized around 2005.[27]

W3C TAG

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Between 2001 and 2004[28]he served as aTim Berners-Leeappointee[29]to theW3CTechnical Architecture Group.[30]

Atom

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Until October 2007, Bray was co-chair, with Paul Hoffman, of theAtom-focused Atompub Working Group of theInternet Engineering Task Force.Atom is a web syndication format developed to address perceived deficiencies with theRSS 2.0 format.

JSON

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Bray worked with the IETF JSON Working Group in 2013 and 2014, serving as editor of RFC 7159, a specification of the JSON Data Interchange Format which revised RFC 4627 and highlighted interoperability best practices, released in March 2014.[31]He also edited RFC 8259, a further revision of JSON.[32]

Software

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Bray has written software applications, including Bonnie which was the inspiration forBonnie++,aUnixfile systembenchmarkingtool; Lark, the firstXMLprocessor;[33]and APE, the Atom Protocol Exerciser.[34]

Environmentalism

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Bray being arrested at theTrans Mountain Pipelineprotest in 2019

Starting in 2018, Bray became visible as an environmentalist in the context of theTrans Mountain Pipelinedispute. On April 18, 2018, he was arrested for contempt of court at a demonstration at the Trans Mountain site in Burnaby, Canada.[35][36]He also participated in an open letter from business leaders to the British Columbia government[37]and was subsequently a public voice against the project.[38][39] In 2019, Bray was the only VP-level Amazon employee to sign a letter to Amazon shareholders calling for a stop to Amazon Web Services' support for oil extraction.[40]

See also

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References

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  1. ^Bray, T. (1996). "Measuring the Web".Computer Networks and ISDN Systems.28(7–11): 993–1005.doi:10.1016/0169-7552(96)00061-X.
  2. ^abKhare, R.; Barr, J.; Baker, M.; Bosworth, A.; Bray, T.; McManus, J. (2005). "Web services considered harmful?".Special interest tracks and posters of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web - WWW '05.p. 800.doi:10.1145/1062745.1062758.ISBN978-1595930514.S2CID13543260.
  3. ^Teaching Glass,Ongoing, 2014-05-13
  4. ^abcTim BrayatDBLPBibliography Server
  5. ^abcTim Bray in Google Scholar
  6. ^abcTim Brayauthor profile page at theACMDigital Library
  7. ^Roger Debreceny (2009-06-18).XBRL for Interactive Data.Springer.ISBN9783642014376.
  8. ^abBray, Tim (December 1, 2014)."Amazonian".Ongoing.RetrievedJanuary 2,2015.
  9. ^Bray, Tim (April 29, 2020)."Leaving Amazon".Ongoing.RetrievedMay 3,2020.
  10. ^Interview with Tim Brayfrom Canada on Rails 2006, discussingRuby,Rails,REST,XMLandJava
  11. ^Tim Bray @ FOWA Expo 08 — The Fear Factor[permanent dead link]
  12. ^Interview with Tim Brayfrom QCon San Francisco 2008, discussing the future of the web
  13. ^Bray, Tim."The New 40".Ongoing.Retrieved15 September2019.
  14. ^Weise, Karen (22 July 2020)."The Amazon Critic Who Saw Its Power From the Inside".The New York Times.Retrieved4 March2021.
  15. ^"Eight to Receive Honorary Degrees".June 1, 2009.
  16. ^abJoe Cellini."Tim Bray: Biomedical Visualization".Apple Inc. Archived fromthe originalon 2004-04-04.
  17. ^Blake, G. E.; Bray, T.; Tompa, F. W. (1992)."Shortening the OED: Experience with a grammar-defined database".ACM Transactions on Information Systems.10(3): 213.doi:10.1145/146760.146764.S2CID16859602.
  18. ^ "Antarcti.ca CEO Tim Bray joins technology's elite".geospatialworld.net. 23 January 2002.Retrieved4 May2020.
  19. ^Tim Bray(2010-03-15)."Now A No-Evil Zone".Archived fromthe originalon 2013-10-19.
  20. ^Tim Bray(2012-06-29)."Now On Identity".Archived fromthe originalon 2013-11-09.
  21. ^Bray, Tim (2013)."Golang Diaries I".tbray.org."a really good time to write about something is while you're still discovering it, before you're looking at it from the inside" —Tim Bray
  22. ^Bray, Tim (February 19, 2014)."Leaving Google".Ongoing.RetrievedFebruary 21,2014.
  23. ^ "'VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue': XML co-author Tim Bray quits AWS over treatment of staff at Amazon's Retail division ".The Register.4 May 2020.Retrieved4 May2020.
  24. ^ "Coronavirus: Amazon vice-president quits over virus firings".BBC.4 May 2020.Retrieved4 May2020.
  25. ^Textuality
  26. ^"TAXI to the Future".Retrieved2012-07-08.
  27. ^Tim Bray."ongoing · The Real AJAX Upside".Ongoing.Retrieved2008-10-26.
  28. ^"W3C TAG History, thru 2004 WebArch Recommendation".W3C.
  29. ^Dan Connolly."TAG - representation" from the larger Web community "?".W3C.
  30. ^David Becker."How does XML measure up?".CNET Networks.Retrieved2008-10-26.
  31. ^Bray, T. (2014). Bray, T. (ed.)."RFC 7159: The JSON Data Interchange Format".doi:10.17487/RFC7159.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal=(help)
  32. ^Bray, T. (2017). Bray, T. (ed.)."RFC 8259: The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format".doi:10.17487/RFC8259.S2CID263868313.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal=(help)
  33. ^Lark—the first XML processor
  34. ^ongoing — Software—Summary Page on Tim Bray'sweblog
  35. ^Cruickshank, Ainslie (18 April 2018)."More protesters make court appearances as Kinder Morgan pipeline protests go global".The Star.Retrieved30 October2019.
  36. ^Lambert, Sheena (19 March 2018)."'Welcome to the wild side, Mum' — A day with the Kinder Morgan pipeline opponents ".National Observer.Retrieved30 October2019.
  37. ^Gibillini, Nicole (19 April 2018)."Hundreds of business leaders urge B.C.'s Horgan to keep up Trans Mountain fight".BNN Bloomberg.Retrieved30 October2019.
  38. ^Erlichman, Jon (31 May 2018)."Trans Mountain nationalization a 'grave mistake': Open Text co-founder".BNN Bloomberg.Retrieved30 October2019.
  39. ^Erlichmann, Jon (20 April 2018)."OpenText co-founder Tim Bray throws support behind B.C. Premier Horgan on Trans Mountain".BNN Bloomberg.Retrieved30 October2019.
  40. ^Merchant, Brian (12 April 2019)."6,000 Amazon Employees, Including a VP and Directors, Are Now Calling on Jeff Bezos to Stop Automating Oil Extraction".Gizmodo.
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