[conspire] DMOZ, its many names, trademark problems, Curlie Directory

[Rick Moen]

'Sherman, set the WABAC machine to....'

Some of us are old enough to remember Yahoo Directory when it was a hierarchical
directory of information about everything -- this old thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!#/media/File:Yahoo_screenshot_1994.png
(Pretty soon if not already, I'll be able to say 'Some of us are old
enough to remember Yahoo.')

Anyhow, for the whippersnappers among us, it was 'Yahoo - A Guide to the WWW',
a very unadorned Web-portal page opening up into a hierarchical directory
of information about all sorts of subjects.  And it was a primary way
pretty much everyone used to find information.  Subtrees had individual
human editors who curated the content using wiki-like editing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Directory

The name Yahoo got semiofficially backronymed as 'Yet Another
Hierarchically Organized Oracle' (or alternately 'Yet Another
Hierarchical Officious Oracle), after the firm's co-founders picked
the word because they just liked that Swiftian word.

Starting around 1997, owning firm Yahoo, Inc.s tarted leaving Yahoo
Directory behind for more-trendy stuff, and most folks ceased
associating the firm with Yahoo Directory.  The firm kept trying to
stripmine money out of the Directory, slowly strangling it, and finally
killing it off in 2017.
https://searchengineland.com/yahoo-directory-close-204370

But meanwhile...

A couple of guys at Sun Microsystems in 1998 thought Yahoo Directory was
(still) a neat idea but would do a lot better with an open content
licence so the project wouldn't be hostage to the erratic fortunes and
poor attention span of companies like, say, Yahoo.  For some odd reason,
they kept the main software proprietary, but that's far less important
and more easily replaced than the data.  

So, they set out their shingle for a Yahoo Directory workalikes with a
free-ish content licence[1] -- and this is where they ran into trademark
problems, twice:  They launched the project as Gnuhoo.  Clever, right?  
Legally clueless, but clever.  First, FSF spoke roughly to them about
the 'Gnu' part because of their reliance on proprietary software.  So,
they renamed it to NewHoo.  Then, Yahoo spoke even more roughly to them
because of the 'hoo' part.  So, they set about to rename the project
from NewHoo to ZURL, but before that could happen NewHoo, Inc. was
acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation at the height of that
firm's importance (Oct. 1998).  Hey, remember them?

Netscape, which at least had a clue about branding and how to escape
from trademark problems, put the kibosh on the ZURL idiocy and renamed
the project Open Directory Project.  The Internet directory Netscape
parked it first at directory.mozilla.org and then at dmoz.org -- which I
guess was supposed to suggest Directory of Mozilla or something?
Anyway, for whatever reason, everyone gradually forgot the somewhat
bland name Open Directory PRoject and started calling the thing DMOZ.
By 2000, courtesy mostly of its open content licence, it surpassed the
size of Yahoo Directory and kept growing.  Netscape, by contrast, got
gobbled up by AOL, and that was the end of them, more or less (except in
giving us Mozilla).

The success of DMOZ content inspired the open-content Nupedia project,
which spawned Wikipedia.

DMOZ was never _quite_ 'free' as in freedom.  Not only was the core
software proprietary, but governance remained in corporate hands despite 
volunteer involvement (and the freedom of those volunteers to move
content elsewhere if sufficiently alienated).  Category editors
(volunteers) are sometimes removed by DMOZ professional staff.  And
the corporate dependence was ultimately the project's Achilles Heel, as
AOL announced in 2017 it no longer wished to support the project, and
summarily shut it down with zero notice.
https://searchengineland.com/dmoz-has-officially-closed-271530
https://www.resource-zone.com/forum/t/why-dmoz-was-closed.53529/

Ironically, AOL itself ended up being gobbled up by the same Verizon
subsidiary (Oath, Inc.) that gobbled up Yahoo, so basically Yahoo
Directory's competitor landed in the same corporation just in time to be
_also_ strangled by it.


But the DMOZ data lived on.  (It's that open content licensing, you
see.)

Some longtime DMOZ people set themselves up as Curlie Project Inc, and
rehosted _all_ the DMOZ data set at Curlie Directory, https://curlie.org/ .
https://www.bleery.com/blog/dmoz-returns-under-a-new-name-curlie/

   Who runs Curlie?

   Curlie Project Inc. is first and foremost a self-regulating community
   of net-citizens. Through a system of self-governance, the volunteer
   editors manage the directory's growth and development, and through a
   system of checks-and-balances, ensure the directory is of superior
   quality.
   [...]

   How is Curlie different from other directories?

   Other directories are developed and managed by small paid staffs.
   Curlie was founded on the premise that directories with small staffs can
   not scale to the growth of the Web, and still maintain a quality,
   current directory.

   Curlie is developed and managed by a constantly growing community of
   net-citizens who are experts in their areas of interest. 
   [...]

https://curlie.org/docs/en/help/geninfo.html

Why the name 'curlie'?  Damned if I know.  Maybe all the good names were
taken, again.  Certainly, it's appropriate given the long line of 
questionable and hastily chosen names the project's had.

I'm just a bit unclear on the 'how stuff gets paid for' and 'how does
governance work' topics (in relation to Curlie), but things look
promising.  Nor do I have any idea whose software it runs, its
licensing, or how to host a different one if necessary -- valid
concerns.


Oh, and yes, I am indeed a curlie.org category editor, as I was a DMOZ
editor.  (All of the editor accounts were carried over unchanged.)

https://curlie.org/editors/editcat/index?cat=Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/User_Groups/North_America
https://curlie.org/editors/editcat/index?cat=Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/User_Groups/North_America/United_States/California

Is it retro?  Sure.  But it's still alive!


[1] Even though FSF objected to it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070813215202/http://www.dmoz.org/license.html
In 2011, this problem was fixed by a switch to Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 Unported.