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 owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.

Project information

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Founders

ODP was founded as Gnuhoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel in 1998. At the time, Skrenta and Truel were 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 was already well known for his role in developing 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.

Transition

The Gnuhoo directory went live on June 5, 1998, and was renamed Newhoo after a Slashdot article was posted in which posters claimed that Gnuhoo had nothing in common with the spirit of free software for which the GNU project was known and was simply a commercial enterprise seeking to construct an alternative to Yahoo! Directory using volunteer labor.^* Newhoo became ODP after it was acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation in October 1998 and the content was released under an open content 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.

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