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Who Owns Dmoz?

Posted by Cliff on from the stuff-to-think-about dept.

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? "

5 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:does it matter? by The+Man · · Score: 4
    The meat of the question: How much would Microsoft have to pay for your web site?

    Enough to buy and shut down Microsoft. :) So about a trillion...a mean, 800 billion, no whoops, 600 billion dollars.

  2. Umm... by luge · · Score: 4

    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

  3. Wrong answer.... by Carnage4Life · · Score: 4

    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.

  4. Wait a minute... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5
    I don't know AOL's management except by reputation. But I know the Mozilla folks pretty well, and they are not about to stand for their company running rough-shod over other people's rights. AOL would have to both dismiss all of those folks and continue the project. Not likely.

    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.
  5. Openness at DMoz by Chalst · · Score: 5
    All of the output from DMoz is available in regularly updated RDF logs.

    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)