Open Directory Project 151
Open Directory Project
Open Directory Project
URL dmoz.org [1]Commercial? No
Type of site Web directory
Registration Optional
Content license Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
Owner Netscape (AOL)
Created by Netscape
Launched June 5, 1998
Alexa rank 730 (March 2012)[2]The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name),
is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and
maintained by a community of volunteer editors.
ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic are grouped into
categories which can then include smaller categories.Project information
ODP was founded in the United States as Gnuhoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel in 1998 while they were both
working as engineers for Sun Microsystems. Chris Tolles, who worked at Sun Microsystems as the head of
marketing for network security products, also signed on in 1998 as a co-founder of Gnuhoo along with co-founders
Bryn Dole and Jeremy Wenokur. Skrenta had developed TASS, an ancestor of tin, the popular threaded Usenet
newsreader for Unix systems. Coincidentally, the original category structure of the Gnuhoo directory was based
loosely on the structure of Usenet newsgroups then in existence.
The Gnuhoo directory went live on June 5, 1998. After a Slashdot article suggested that Gnuhoo had nothing in
common with the spirit of free software,[3] for which the GNU project was known, Richard Stallman and the Free
Software Foundation objected to the use of Gnu. So Gnuhoo was changed to NewHoo. Yahoo! then objected to the
use of "Hoo" in the name, prompting them to switch the name again. ZURL was the likely choice.[4] However,
before the switch to ZURL, NewHoo was acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation in October 1998 and
became the Open Directory Project. Netscape released the ODP data under the Open Directory License. Netscape
was acquired by AOL shortly thereafter and ODP was one of the assets included in the acquisition. AOL later
merged with Time-Warner.