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.
