Tim Bray

{{Infobox person

| name = Tim Bray

| image = Tim-at-protect-the-inlet (cropped).jpg

| caption = Tim Bray in 2018

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1955|06|21}}

| birth_place = Alberta, Canada

| employer = {{Plainlist|

Digital Equipment Corporation
University of Waterloo
Waterloo Maple
Open Text Corporation{{Cite journal | last1 = Bray | first1 = T. | title = Measuring the Web | doi = 10.1016/0169-7552(96)00061-X | journal = Computer Networks and ISDN Systems | volume = 28 | issue = 7–11 | pages = 993–1005 | year = 1996 }}
Antarctica Systems
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Sun Microsystems{{Cite book | last1 = Khare | first1 = R. | last2 = Barr | first2 = J. | last3 = Baker | first3 = M. | last4 = Bosworth | first4 = A. | last5 = Bray | first5 = T. | last6 = McManus | first6 = J. | chapter = Web services considered harmful? | doi = 10.1145/1062745.1062758 | title = Special interest tracks and posters of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web - WWW '05 | pages = 800 | year = 2005 | isbn = 978-1595930514 | s2cid = 13543260 }}
Google
Centre for Digital Media[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/05/13/Professor-of-Glass Teaching Glass], Ongoing, 2014-05-13
Amazon.com}}

| occupation =

| known_for = {{Plainlist|

Web standards
Co-author of XML specification}}

| education = University of Guelph (BS)

| spouse = Lauren Wood

| website = {{URL|https://www.tbray.org/ongoing}}

}}

Timothy William Bray (born June 21, 1955) is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the original XML specification.{{cite book|title=XBRL for Interactive Data |author=Roger Debreceny|isbn=9783642014376|date=2009-06-18|publisher=Springer }} He worked for Amazon Web Services from December 2014 until May 2020 when he quit due to concerns over the terminating of whistleblowers.{{cite web|last=Bray|first=Tim|title=Amazonian|url=https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/12/01/Amazonian|work=Ongoing|access-date=January 2, 2015|date=December 1, 2014}}{{cite web|last=Bray|first=Tim|title=Leaving Amazon|url=https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon|work=Ongoing|access-date=May 3, 2020|date=April 29, 2020}} Previously he has been employed by Google, Sun Microsystems and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Bray has also founded or co-founded several start-ups such as Antarctica Systems.[http://www.infoq.com/interviews/tim_bray_rails_and_more Interview with Tim Bray] from Canada on Rails 2006, discussing Ruby, Rails, REST, XML and Java[http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2008/london/videos/tim-bray/ Tim Bray @ FOWA Expo 08 — The Fear Factor]{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}[http://www.infoq.com/interviews/tim-bray-future-of-web Interview with Tim Bray] from QCon San Francisco 2008, discussing the future of the web

Education and early life

Bray was born on June 21, 1955{{cite web |last1=Bray | first1=Tim | title=The New 40 |url=https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/06/24/The-new-40 |website=Ongoing |access-date=15 September 2019}} in Alberta, Canada where his father worked for the Dominion Experimental Farm Service in Fort Vermilion. He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, and returned to Canada to attend school at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario.{{cite news |last1=Weise |first1=Karen |title=The Amazon Critic Who Saw Its Power From the Inside |work=The New York Times |date=22 July 2020 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/technology/amazon-critic-tim-bray.html |access-date=4 March 2021}} He graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science, double majoring in mathematics and computer Science. In 2009, he would return to Guelph to receive an honorary doctorate.{{cite web|url=http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/2009/06/eight_to_receiv.html|title=Eight to Receive Honorary Degrees|date=June 1, 2009}} 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."{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040404093431/http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/bray/|archive-date=2004-04-04|url=https://www.apple.com/science/profiles/bray/|title=Tim Bray: Biomedical Visualization|author=Joe Cellini|publisher=Apple Inc.}}

Career

Bray joined Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Toronto as a software specialist. In 1983, Bray left DEC for Microtel Pacific Research. He joined the New Oxford English Dictionary (OED) project at the University of Waterloo in 1987 as its manager.{{Cite journal | last1 = Blake | first1 = G. E. | last2 = Bray | first2 = T. | last3 = Tompa | first3 = F. W. | doi = 10.1145/146760.146764 | title = Shortening the OED: Experience with a grammar-defined database | journal = ACM Transactions on Information Systems | volume = 10 | issue = 3 | pages = 213 | year = 1992 | s2cid = 16859602 | doi-access = free }} It was during this time Bray worked with SGML, a technology that would later become central to both Open Text Corporation and his XML and Atom standardization work. Bray co-founded Antarctica Systems - in 2002, during his tenure as CEO for Antarctica, Bray was included in Upside magazine's elite 100 list, alongside other IT leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison.

{{cite web

|url= https://www.geospatialworld.net/news/antarcti-ca-ceo-tim-bray-joins-technologys-elite/

|title= Antarcti.ca CEO Tim Bray joins technology's elite

|publisher= geospatialworld.net

|date = 23 January 2002

|access-date=4 May 2020}}

Bray was director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems from early 2004 to early 2010. He joined Google as a developer advocate in 2010 focusing on Android, and then on technologies related to identity, such as OAuth and OpenID. {{DBLP|name=Tim Bray}}[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=tim+bray Tim Bray in Google Scholar]{{ACMPortal|id=81100100902}}{{cite web |url=http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google |title=Now A No-Evil Zone |date=2010-03-15 |archive-date=2013-10-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131019083421/http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/06/29/Becoming-an-Identity-guy |author=Tim Bray |author-link=Tim Bray |url-status=dead }}{{cite web |url=http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/06/29/Becoming-an-Identity-guy |title=Now On Identity |date=2012-06-29 |archive-date=2013-11-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131109040921/http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google |author=Tim Bray |author-link=Tim Bray |url-status=dead }}{{cite web|first=Tim|last=Bray|year=2013|title=Golang Diaries I|website=tbray.org|url=https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2013/06/16/Go-Love-Hate|quote=“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}} He left Google in March 2014, unwilling to relocate to Silicon Valley from Vancouver.{{cite web|last=Bray|first=Tim|title=Leaving Google|url=https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/02/19/Leaving-Google|work=Ongoing|access-date=February 21, 2014|date=February 19, 2014}} He started working for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in December 2014. Bray left AWS in May 2020, after being dismayed by Amazon's treatment of whistleblowers who had raised concerns over the safety of warehouse workers in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bray had held the vice president rank, 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.

{{cite web

|url= https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/04/tim_bray_quits_amazon/

|title= 'VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue': XML co-author Tim Bray quits AWS over treatment of staff at Amazon's Retail division

|publisher= The Register

|date = 4 May 2020

|access-date= 4 May 2020}}

{{cite web

|url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52534567?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-reporting-story

|title= Coronavirus: Amazon vice-president quits over virus firings

|publisher= BBC

|date = 4 May 2020

|access-date= 4 May 2020}}

Bray's entrepreneurial activities include:

=Waterloo Maple=

Bray served as the part-time chief executive officer of Waterloo Maple during 1989–1990. Waterloo Maple is the developer of the Maple mathematical software.

=Open Text Corporation=

Bray left the new OED project in 1989 to co-found Open Text Corporation with 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.” Thus in 1995, Open Text released the Open Text Index, one of the first popular commercial web search 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=

Bray, along with his wife Lauren Wood, ran Textuality,[http://www.textuality.com Textuality] a consulting practice in the field of web and publishing technology. He was contracted by Netscape in 1999, along with Ramanathan V. Guha, in part to create a new version of the Meta Content Framework called Resource Description Framework, which used the XML language.

=Antarctica Systems=

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

Web standards

Bray has contributed to standards in technology, particularly Web standards at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

=XML=

As an Invited Expert at the World Wide Web Consortium between 1996 and 1999, Bray co-edited the XML and XML namespace specifications. Halfway through the project Bray accepted a consulting engagement with Netscape, provoking vociferous protests from Netscape competitor Microsoft (who had supported the initial moves to bring SGML to the web.){{fact|date=May 2020}} Bray was temporarily asked to resign the editorship. This led to intense dispute in the Working Group, eventually solved by the appointment of Microsoft's Jean Paoli as third co-editor.

In 2001, Bray wrote an article called Taxi to the Future {{cite web|title=TAXI to the Future|url=http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/03/14/taxi.html|access-date=2012-07-08}} for Xml.com which proposed a means to improve web client user experience and web server system performance via a Transform-Aggregate-send XML-Interact architecture—this proposed system is very similar to the Ajax paradigm, popularized around 2005.{{cite web|url=http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/14/AJAX-Performance|title=ongoing · The Real AJAX Upside|author=Tim Bray|website=Ongoing|access-date=2008-10-26}}

=W3C TAG=

Between 2001 and 2004{{cite web|title=W3C TAG History, thru 2004 WebArch Recommendation|url=http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/tag-2004|publisher=W3C}} he served as a Tim Berners-Lee appointee{{cite web|title=TAG - representation "from the larger Web community"?|url=http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2001Dec/0006.html|author=Dan Connolly|publisher=W3C}} to the W3C Technical Architecture Group.{{cite web|title=How does XML measure up?|url=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39116628-1,00.htm|author=David Becker|publisher=CNET Networks|access-date=2008-10-26}}

=Atom=

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

=JSON=

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.{{cite journal |last1=Bray |first1=T. |year=2014 |title=RFC 7159: The JSON Data Interchange Format |url=http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159 |journal=Internet Engineering Task Force |doi=10.17487/RFC7159 |doi-access=free |editor-last1=Bray |editor-first1=T.}} He also edited RFC 8259, a further revision of JSON.{{cite journal |last1=Bray |first1=T. |year=2017 |title=RFC 8259: The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format |url=https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259 |journal=Internet Engineering Task Force |doi=10.17487/RFC8259 |s2cid=263868313 |editor-last1=Bray |editor-first1=T.|url-access=subscription }}

Software

Bray has written software applications, including Bonnie which was the inspiration for Bonnie++, a Unix file system benchmarking tool; Lark, the first XML processor;[http://www.textuality.com/Lark/ Lark]—the first XML processor and APE, the Atom Protocol Exerciser.[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/misc/Software ongoing — Software]—Summary Page on Tim Bray's weblog

Environmentalism

File:Tim-at-protect-the-inlet.jpg protest in 2019]]

Starting in 2018, Bray became visible as an environmentalist in the context of the Trans Mountain Pipeline dispute. On April 18, 2018, he was arrested for contempt of court at a demonstration at the Trans Mountain site in Burnaby, Canada.{{cite web |last1=Cruickshank |first1=Ainslie |title=More protesters make court appearances as Kinder Morgan pipeline protests go global |url=https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/04/18/more-protesters-make-court-appearances-as-kinder-morgan-pipeline-protests-go-global.html |website=The Star |date=18 April 2018 |access-date=30 October 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Lambert |first1=Sheena |title='Welcome to the wild side, Mum' — A day with the Kinder Morgan pipeline opponents |url=https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/03/19/opinion/welcome-wild-side-mum-day-kinder-morgan-pipeline-opponents |website=National Observer |date=19 March 2018 |access-date=30 October 2019}} He also participated in an open letter from business leaders to the British Columbia government{{cite web |last1=Gibillini |first1=Nicole |title=Hundreds of business leaders urge B.C.'s Horgan to keep up Trans Mountain fight |url=https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/hundreds-of-business-leaders-urge-b-c-s-horgan-to-keep-up-trans-mountain-fight-1.1061836 |website=BNN Bloomberg |date=19 April 2018 |access-date=30 October 2019}} and was subsequently a public voice against the project.{{cite web |last1=Erlichman |first1=Jon |title=Trans Mountain nationalization a 'grave mistake': Open Text co-founder |url=https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/trans-mountain-nationalization-a-grave-mistake-open-text-co-founder~1406874 |website=BNN Bloomberg |date=31 May 2018 |access-date=30 October 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Erlichmann |first1=Jon |title=OpenText co-founder Tim Bray throws support behind B.C. Premier Horgan on Trans Mountain |url=https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/opentext-co-founder-tim-bray-throws-support-behind-b-c-premier-horgan-on-trans-mountain~1375831 |website=BNN Bloomberg |date=20 April 2018 |access-date=30 October 2019}} 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.{{cite web |last1=Merchant |first1=Brian |title=6,000 Amazon Employees, Including a VP and Directors, Are Now Calling on Jeff Bezos to Stop Automating Oil Extraction |url=https://gizmodo.com/6-000-amazon-employees-including-a-vp-and-directors-n-1834001079 |website=Gizmodo|date=12 April 2019 }}

In 2024 Bray co-edited a book titled Standing On High Ground, a collection of personal stories of individuals who were arrested while protesting the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.{{Cite web |title=Nine Unique Book Recommendations for Everyone on Your List |url=https://thetyee.ca/Presents/2024/12/04/Holiday-Book-Recommendations/ |access-date=2025-03-18 |website=The Tyee}}

Bibliography

{{Cite book |url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/1432733930 |title=Standing on High Ground: Civil Disobedience on Burnaby Mountain |publisher=Between the Lines |year=2024 |isbn=9781771136631 |editor-last=Cornell |editor-first=Rosemary |location=Toronto, Ontario |editor-last2=Drobnies |editor-first2=Adrienne |editor-last3=Bray |editor-first3=Tim}}