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Who Owns Dmoz?
C. Adam Kuether asks: "I like the concept of the open directory project
and am considering joining the effort and contributing my bit to
organizing the Web.
I am concerned about the ownership rights to this compilation. The useage agreements seem reasonable enough now, but what assurance is there that this work will not become just another asset of the Time/Warner/AOL (read Netscape) media empire?
Could this project convert to a legally enforceable open and free use license? Are the existing open content licenses practical? "
Less than 1% of all sites in the ODP are inactive. Currently a program just finished up checking every link in the directory and has flagged inactive sites for editors to check. What does this mean? In a few days you'll be very lucky (or unlucky) if you find an inactive site in the directory.
Rumors of the death of the DMOZ story have been greatly exaggerated?
:)
Oh well, reposting stories that disappeared off the main page is one way to combat first posters, I suppose.
Now let's get some news on this site!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
there are a lot of adults who are a lot less mature than 14 year olds. don't tack the crap onto a specific age group-- it doesn't work that way. i know 13 year olds who act a lot better than some who are over 30.
According to the ODP Guidelines, inactive accounts expire after three months.
I was an editor long before Netscape or AOL came into the picture. Your amended "editors guidlines" were never pointed out clearly, and I did follow the guidelines that I signed up under several years ago.
If you want to act like this - fine - bureaucratic arrogance solves zip. Unfortunately, the open, cool thing ODP started out to be has become just another arm of a bureacratic hydra. But, hey, there's a ton of other search engines to choose from.
On a personal note, if you AOL guys had simply pointed out the fact that I hadn't followed your new "editors guidlines", I would have been happy to comply. But no, that would have too simple, too human. Well, go back to reading your log files dude. I'm goin' out and fly my bird for awhile (after I check Google and Yahoo! for the latest paramotor info)!
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Have a look at www.senga.org. You can create with Domz like directory, it can even now load the Dmoz database. Senga is derived from www.ecila.com a french directory.
Well ! I know that english has borrowed many french words, because of the normands invasion ! but www.senga.org seems to be definitly more in english than french ;)
Ok, let's take a look-see, shall we?
Netscape Communications Corporation (`Netscape') owns the copyright to the compilation of the different contributions, and makes the Open Directory available to you to use under the following license agreement terms and conditions (`Open Directory License').[emphasis mine]
Ok, so what will prevent AOL from changing the license tomorrow to "and you will pay us tribute yearly, and you will volunteer for Steve Case's favorite charity 3 times a year"?
Answer: not a damn thing, except maybe public opinion.
James
-jcl
Female Prison Rape in NY
Ownership is a transitive relation. See www.m-w.com
Female Prison Rape in NY
Female Prison Rape in NY
- License FAQ
- The Open Directory's Open Directory categories (everything you ever wanted to know about the Open Directory but were afraid to ask).
Don't mark this up as informative, it only took me 30 seconds copying and pasting.Female Prison Rape in NY
I would highly encourage anyone who is expert and enthusiastic about a subject, and is literate and web-literate (and who is not just going to promote their own site!) to apply.. We even have a growing selection of non-English and Regional categories. As it says, "for just a few minutes of your time you can help make the Web a better place".
Female Prison Rape in NY
Why are you replying to me? Where did you get the idea that I'm "up in arms"? I don't care about dmoz, I don't think it will get 'big' enough to draw AOL's attention, and Netscape is cool (enough) and smart (enough) to leave it the way it is.
The issue here (and it's only an issue, to me at least, becuase Time-Warner now owns dmoz thru AOL/Netscape, and Time-Warner are !@#$s) is, dmoz now is free (along with most if not all search engines). Let's say I submit an entry, thinking everyone will get free access to this entry. Then, later, dmoz changes the rules and people have to be 'members' and are charged for access to the entries. Obviously, I, and anyone else who put any significant (not 5 minute's worth) work into dmoz would be understandably upset that the work they did is now owned by dmoz, and dmoz is charging for it.
Not quite true, when ODP started (just under 2 years ago) it was totally independent. After around 9 months, it was then sold to Netscape as it fitted in with their 'open software' system. AOL then brought Netscape in July last year.
;)
Ok, ok. You got me.
So I'm no history major.
volunteers are told: `go away, we don't want your sort here'.
Eager volunteers who can't spell, don't see why pr0n sites shouldn't
go in Reference/Education/K_through_12, and delete any and all sites
that annoy them, well, they are worse than useless.
The real difficulties aren't to do with open access, they are to do
with transparency of decision making and the possibility of abuse from
on high.
Still, I've got to say your case is a bit surprising. How many of the
sites you submitted were competitors sites?
Charles
What was the last one?? Maybe CT and the boys feel the need to extend "Ask /." questions for more discussion?
I just think it's really weird, if they are purposely reposting then I think they should state that somewhere... it just opens the flood doors for confusion and flaimbait.
Wheeeee
we're all going to work for them eventually... it's unavoidable.
A secondary issue: Who does the selling?
A successful opensource project can potentially be as much the work of active users as the project originator. There's an issue of trust brought into this dilemma. How many people are prepared to deal with such a situation? It seems to me that there's been a bit of, to borrow from Alan Greenspan, "irrational exuberance" displayed in recent history.
Google is a keyword search engine. Dmoz is a directory. If you're looking for general info, us dmoz. Specific info, use Google. But they do very different things. You can't compare them. It's much more fair to compare dmoz to yahoo.
Does anyone else see the incredible irony in the above post?
Damn, I knew it was too good to be true! How the hell are we going to filter out text ads? If Google does this the community of people who don't want spam and ads forced down their throats will leave somewhere else. Of course this is how it always is: First you have a few pioneers with a golden age, then the public comes in with the dirt.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
C'mon we don't really need to be asking this on Slashdot...Seems like maybe this is something that people need to figure out on their own...and anyway if some big place owns them, then so what? If they don't mess with it than who cares?
~i = an imaginary being~
~i = an imaginary being~
you failed to mention that this site was in french.
Sometimes it becomes a full time job because people submit idiot sites to the wrong catagories and I have to sift through them in my heavily spammed catagory: (Computer:Supercomputing).
I'm just curious to know why you call it "AOL/dmoz" -- how can you tell AOL had anything to do with it, or for that matter still does? I've been an editor since the NewHoo days, and I still can't tell AOL owns dmoz. It's very obvious that Netscape owns dmoz, and it's true that AOL owns Netscape, but AOL doesn't own dmoz directly -- so I wonder why you call it that.
personal site: journal.amanita.net
lesbian se
Forgive me, but that just sounds scary. What if I edit the Suburban Yeti category, and I've done a really good job with it, and somebody who knows nothing about any Yetis, or just Rural ones, comes and messes up my stuff? What do you do about it?
Also, I'm curious how you can make the statement that oneMission is "...the first grass-roots, from-the-bottom-up directory on the web." Wouldn't that be Yahoo!, or perhaps dmoz? Or hell, any one of a number of directories that I'm sure existed well before the web went commercial and everyone got on it.
personal site: journal.amanita.net
lesbian se
If you trace it back all the way, yes, AOL/Time-Warner does own dmoz. The project is actually owned by Netscape, which in turn is owned by AOL/Time-Warner. But don't forget, AOL/Time-Warner also owns ICQ and a helluva lot of other things. Some people who are already editors have expressed dismay upon realizing that they are -- as they put it -- "working for the man" but the majority of editors are working for the good of the project. (And yes, I am a dmoz editor.)
personal site: journal.amanita.net
lesbian se
Having looked at it a bit more, oneMission doesn't seem like that great a directory. It's been around for a while (since at least January 1999), and yet it's tiny with very few links. The signup page states that "links to pages that may be harmful to children or that contain violence of any kind" are forbidden, as are "links to pages that would constitute a violation of any law, regulation, rule or custom" -- yet oneMission is littered with adult links, spam, etc. Maybe if more people participated it would begin to grow into a decent directory, but as it stands now it's just crap.
Disclaimer: Yes, I am an ODP editor, but any opinions above are mine alone.
personal site: journal.amanita.net
lesbian se
Examining the logs for that category, I noticed an editor 'jamesewing' (which I would guess the above poster was).
I've been unable to find out why the editor was removed, but last edit by that editor in that category was on the 7/Jun/1999 13:51:57 - three months AFTER the AOL purchase of Netscape (who 'brought' ODP many many months before).
Amendment: I've just viewed the edit logs of one of the sites, and a few reasons shoot out at me: Descripton was in ALL CAPS (a big no no in the entire internet, not just ODP) and had non-english sites in an 'English only' category (German sites should go in the World/ hierarchy). Same with a Swedish site.
Basically, this editor got thrown out for not following the editors guidelines.
Richy C.
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Basically, staff agreed with meta-editors (who are editors who 'edit' editors - ie give them extra editing permissions, recommend them for 'promotion etc), editalls and editors, that if AOL/Netscape/Other were to either try and place adverts on the editing site (dmoz.org - we don't care if our 'downstream users' put adverts on their site or not), or stop issuing RDF dumps or similar then we would take a copy of the most recent RDF dumps that we have (and believe me, many many editors take regular copies for their own usage) and re-start the project somewhere else.
It's only taken less than 2 years for the ODP to grow to over 1.7million sites and with less than 1% of dead sites listed (they are all checked every couple of months) I personally think they are doing better than Yahoo!.
Okay, like all things ODP will have people that are 'critical' about what it is, but many many more people like it.
Richy C.
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> AOL/Time Warner has owned dmoz from the beginning.
Not quite true, when ODP started (just under 2 years ago) it was totally independent. After around 9 months, it was then sold to Netscape as it fitted in with their 'open software' system. AOL then brought Netscape in July last year.
For those of you who must know, dmoz stands for directory.mozilla.org - and, yes, you can reach dmoz.org via the full URL of directory.mozilla.org URL.
ODP is an TLA for 'Open Directory Project'.
Richy C.
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Its a good idea... you shouldn't make contributing to this thing a full time job.. if all the info goes away tomorrow, you should not weep for days. Contribute now and enjoy the idea.. odds are they're not trying to screw anyone... I'm gunna use it and not worry about tomorrow..
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
I could have sworn I saw this story posted yesterday, and looking at the date on the story (May 1, @06:12AM) and the date on the "First Post" (April 30, @08:01PM) either the first posters are getting a hell of a lot faster or someone has been using ye old crackpipe.
drink tea
http://www.specialtea.com
flesh eating ants records
grab code snippets while contributing, it'll make it worth the trip.
why do we always try to compare stuff with eachother? why not back'em up instead?
Maybe they'll put up banner ads and make some money off all your hard work.
2) Why are you being abusive? I'd wager I work a lot harder than you. And you appear to be the wanker in this exchange, because...
3) Like so many on Slashdot, you can't offer information, or even a coherent arguement, so you resort to name-calling and abuse. In person, you would be scorned for that. But here at Slashdot, you have found a home. Here you can spout off in ad hominem attacks and mindless, uninformed paranoia, and you'll often get moderated up for it. I'm sick of this and so...
4) It's time to take back Slashdot from people like you! I remember a couple of years ago, before accounts and moderation, when smart folks used to post intelligent arguements. There is no place here for your ad hominem attacks! Come back and post when you've read about the issues and have become informed.
I don't quite get why everyone is so up in arms over this. The solution is just so damned simple. Do not do anything that involves other people. You don't want your time to be wasted? Don't submit links to any search engine, usenet post, cddb, etc. Then there is nothing from the sweat of your brow for them to make money off of.
This means that it is impractical for me to dump dmoz.org, although it would surely be reasonable for someone with a T1 to do a mirror on, say, a weekly basis.
I'd think archiving it would be wise anyways; it guards against various risks, not merely a change of AOL policy.
It guards against all sorts of outages, whether chosen ( e.g. - license change) or not (fire in the server room).
I would expect the same to be true for VA Linux Systems' SourceForge ; it would be a good thing for people interested in particular projects to do regular CVS archive retrievals so that if an asteroid strikes the Silly Valley, there may be copies of the code elsewhere.
Herein lies my skepticism about SourceForge; I'm not overly worried about them "taking things proprietary," but am rather a bit paranoid about backup procedures. In particular, the lack of visibility of policy on the subject. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
You have to go with your gut. Nothing is forever on the Internet. But I don't know how the Open Directory Project could be much clearer that they have no eeeevil intent. You can use the ODP data pretty much as is. You can grab the whole RDF dump and frame it and repackage it with advertising revenue going to you. You can make derivative works. And the FAQ says that your right to do so is perpetual. Even if Netscape discontinues the project. All they ask is that you acknowledge your use of the volunteer editors' work by putting up a small notice inviting people to become editors.
IMHO, the only reason that the ODP was able to get as big as it is, is precisely because it is not commercial. There is no advertising on ODP. There is no fee for licensing. Ordinary netizens can make a difference just by adding links and describing them, in areas of their interest and expertise.
So, if you are a cynic, you will stay away, because it is already owned by AOL/Time Warner, and you can never put your trust in institutions.
But if you have an ounce of idealism left, you'll apply in hopes of making the Net a better place, for as long as this project remains free of corporate agendas, or until your own interest in helping other surfers find the "good stuff" this way wanes.
I was one of the original category editors when the "Open Directory" (as it was first called) started. (You can still check out my definitive Paramotor category here :-).
When AOL purchased it, I suddenly found my directory editor rights cancelled and my category listed as "needing an editor". I contacted the AOL/dmoz.org folks several times asking to be allowed back in to the category I created and worked so hard on, but to no avail. What a waste.
IMHO, these guys are the Internet equivalent of a lumbering Brontosaurus. They trample lots of good stuff in endless pursuit of the mediocre and Joe Average's $9.95 monthly check!
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
What about the other part of this question: "Are the existing open content licenses practical?"
Female Prison Rape in NY
The original poster asked: Could this project convert to a legally enforceable open and free use license?. But it already is under an Open Content license!
Basically the ownership rights are irrelevant. All the license requires you to do is link back to http://dmoz.org using the supplied "Become an Editor" graphic. If you do that, you can modify, republish, sell, or do anything to the data you like. (IANAL).
As for whether corporate influences will have an effect on the impartiality of the directory - let's get real here. Of course they will. But (A) if it gets really bad, it can be forked, and (B) there's been surprisingly little interference from on high. Staff have a good "hands-free" approach on the whole. I say this as a "meta editor" (name greenrd - check here for proof) who has been with volunteering with the ODP for 18 months.
Female Prison Rape in NY
There is code for ODP like servers out there: POD comes to mind, amongst other tools that can easily be found.
But recreating a new system to allow editors to work on the directory is much harder, and I would be somewhat happier if that kind of forking was made easier. More in line with what ESR said about making forking easier being the best insurance against proprietary abuse. So: liberate the server source!
Charles (editor cas)
Yeah I think its hilarious. I applied to be an editor for DMOZ a while ago. I filled in the form, found 8 websites they did not have listed, wrote original descriptions for them, and posted the results. They rejected me though, apparently because they thought I was not qualified.
I am in fact the editor for Maplesquare - A Canadian directory of websites (and probably the largest Canadian-owned and operated one at that). As well I am a programmer for Spaceref.com, doing some backend administration stuff.
But am I qualified to volunteer my time to work on DMOZ? Evidently not. Oh, well, it gives me more time to write code.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I applied for a position in the PHP programming language category. I am a PHP programmer, and use it on a daily basis. I supplied 8 sites on the subject which were not listed in the directory under that category. All of the sites were directly related to PHP programming - many of them were well known sites that should be listed if that category of the directory was to be of any use to visitors.
I am not sure about what you mean by "competitors" - unless you are assuming I applied to edit the category on Canadian search engines/Directories - which I did not. Certainly if I had been editing a category which directly affected my work position I would have listed our competitors. The point of becoming an editor was to help the internet population as a whole - to give back to the community so to speak - not to advance my company or any such thing. I understand that this does happen, and that they might wish to avoid those sorts of situations. That is why I did not volunteer for that sort of category. I did not want to be rejected because someone perceived the potential for abuse as a cause to reject my application.
At the time I was somewhat miffed I admit, now I am just blase about it. I made the effort to volunteer - if they are stupid enough to reject my help then what can I do? Go on to other projects I suppose, its not like I have any free time anyways - the moment I finish one project I take up another.
I should mention that in addition to my listed employment activities, I also maintain a directory of my own as a hobby - http://www.omphalos.net. I suppose I have directories on the brain.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
The actual content created by ODP editors (of which I am one) is 'open content' and can be downloaded and used by anybody. To my knowledge, over 200 sites are now using the data - Hotbot, Altavista and AOL are just some of the 'bigger names. There is actually nothing stopping Yahoo! or Microsoft using the ODP RDF dumps to put the content on their site as long as they follow the licencing conditions (which are basically just acknowledge the source).
The Open Directory Project started life just under 2 years ago as a project by a few people (skrenta, tolles and a couple of others) who just got fed up with Yahoo!'s dead links. So they started a 'Yahoo-like' directory (called 'Gnuhoo') and opened it to volunteer editors. The object of the Project was (and still is) to create the 'ultimate web directory' for use by anybody.
Since it started ODP has been through a number of names changes, from Gnuhoo it was forced to change its name because the people from GNU complained (the editing software isn't open source, only the content is), then it became NewHoo! but when Netscape brought the ODP it thought it best if the name was changed to stop Yahoo! complaining. Then it became 'directory.mozilla.org', but that was a bit of mouthful so it was shortened the the new URL of http://dmoz.org.
If you would like to use the ODP content on your website, there is a whole range of tools to enable you to use the content on your pages - some of them (like P.O.D.) don't even require you to download the huge RDF dumps.
I hope all this has been informative to people, but I stil fail to see the relevance to Slashdot.
Richy C.
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A more general question: Should people care who their startups/web sites get sold to? Is it moral to sell to just anyone?
When I started GeekPress, I wasn't opposed to at some later point selling to the highest bidder, whoever that would be. But as the site has grown, I've gotten fairly attached to it. I'm not sure under what circumstances and to whom I would be willing to sell it at this point.
The meat of the question: How much would Microsoft have to pay for your web site?
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
If you're looking for examples of how something open can turn into something closed, just check the whole CDDB mess. Mirrors and a GNU license aren't enough to protect you when suits get in the way.
Just keep an eye on the licensing terms. If they start to mutate to the point where you think there should be a schism, take the last good version and set out on your own. But until that happens, why not follow the leader?
-Jason, posting AC because of my job.
YES! This is in the License FAQ. Please read it. If the original poster had, this discussion would not even be taking place.
this appears to be a simple derivative of the NPL. since the netscape public license is classified as an open source license, i'd say that this project is open source too. http://dmoz.org/license.html
Is this really the right place to be asking this? Maybe you could just read the license instead. It's not like it isn't exactly two clicks away from the dmoz frontpage.
~luge(I know it's a slow news day, but c'mon guys...)
IAAL,BIANLY
From the Ask Slashdot:
I am concerned about the ownership rights to this compilation. The useage agreements seem reasonable enough now, but what assurance is there that this work will not become just another asset of the Time/Warner/AOL (read Netscape) media empire?
Your post:
Is this really the right place to be asking this? Maybe you could just read the license instead.
Okay, I don't want to sound like an asshole but "What does your post have to do with the question?". The original poster is worried about how possible it would be for AOL, which has a liberal open content license with respect to dmoz currently, to decide to start exerting ownership rights and using proprietary practices with the dmoz project?
This is a very valid question and here's my answer. It is very possible for AOL to change the licensing agreements and become a ball buster with the dmoz project. Look no further than CDDB which changed it's license after being bought out by corporate interests and becoming a big enough entity. Of course, the solution to this is for there to be several such open services so that even if 1 of them becomes corrupted by greed the others will flourish and take it's place (like CD Index or FreeCDDB are replacements for CDDB).
The original poster also asks about Open Content Licenses and since I just read 30 posts and none of them mentioned this I'll also try to answer this question.
As to whether Open Content Licenses are practical, I say Yes, after all the dmoz project's license has proved this.
Also, given the directory license, you could (and in fact someone should) archive the project as insurance - if the terms change, you can continue the project under the old terms.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
If AOL were to start to misuse DMoz, then it would be possible (not
easy, the code for the ODP is closed source) to start a new volunteer
project based on these logs.
It may worth signing up just to be privvy to the arguments going on in
the editors fora around the whole openness/AOL controversy... Take
care on your application, though: about 90% of applications are
rejected.
Charles (http://achilles.bu.edu/cas)