Open Directory Project
 |
|
|
Type of site
|
Web directory |
|---|---|
| Available in | 90 languages, including English |
| Owner |
AOL (Verizon Communications) |
| Slogan(s) | Open Directory Project |
| Website | dmoz |
| Alexa rank |
 12,619 (April 2017[update]) |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Users | 90,000 |
| Launched | June 5, 1998 |
| Current status | Closed |
|
Content license
|
Open Directory License, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported |
DMOZ (from directory.mozilla.org, an earlier domain name) was a multilingual open-content directory of World Wide Web links. The site and community who maintained it were also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP). It was owned by AOL but constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.
DMOZ used a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic were grouped into categories which then included smaller categories.
DMOZ closed on March 17, 2017. The website became a single landing page on that day.
DMOZ 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. 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, for which the GNU project was known, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation objected to the use of "Gnu" in the name and Gnuhoo was changed to NewHoo. Yahoo! then objected to the use of "Hoo" in the name, prompting a proposed name change, to ZURL. Prior to switching to ZURL, NewHoo was acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation in October 1998 and became the Open Directory Project. Netscape released Open Directory data under the Open Directory License. Netscape was acquired by AOL shortly thereafter and DMOZ was one of the assets included in the acquisition.
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