DMOZ was founded in June of 1998 by Rich Skrenta under the name
GnuHoo.
- Netscape acquired "NewHoo" in November of 1998
- Renamed to the Open Directory Project
Rich Skrenta founded the Directory Mozilla project ( DMOZ ) to
create a cooperative environment that would allow volunteer editors
to keep up with the internet explosion. Prior to the project,
no directory staff could review, add, and manage the vast amount
of submissions made to any human edited directory ( the problem
was primarily identified with the Yahoo Directory ).
Since that time, The Open Directory Project has flourished. Thousands
of volunteer editors maintain the website listings by managing
their own specialized categories. This system of allowing people
with specific interests to manage related categories is the cornerstone
of the "republic" ideology that has since defined DMOZ
as the single authority directory of websites on the internet.
Since its inception, over 50,000 volunteer editors have contributed
to building a directory consisting of more nearly four million
websites.
