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Today Robert Keating, the Editor in Chief of the ODP, made the following announcement in the ODP editor forums (reproduced with his permission):
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"DMOZ was never administered by the Mozilla group. Netscape basically leveraged the name when they acquired NewHoo. There are no immediate plans to move DMOZ (or ChefMoz) under the Mozilla Foundation, nor are there plans to sell it off to the highest bidder. DMOZ will continue being the DMOZ that you know and love, operating under the Netscape brand as it has been for nearly 5 years. The changes AOL is making at Netscape concerning browser development do not affect DMOZ."
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Odp weblog describes itself as
"This is a blog written by ODP editors to inform the general public about news of any important events happening in the world of the ODP that others may be interested in."
Changes at Netscape do not effect ODP
..if you believe that you will believe anything!
What's your opinion. How do you feel the changes will affect the ODP? Positively or negatively.
Cornwall,
I'm not sure, given the title and especially the subtitle of this thread, what the purpose of this discussion is.
If 'Changes at Netscape do not affect ODP' includes subjects like layoffs of ODP staff, shutting down servers (it really makes sense to do so *after* you just invested in upgrading them), selling ODP to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. then it's OK to discuss this. Are there any reliable news sources out there announcing such changes, or are we in the realm of fantasy, rumors, speculation, and wild guessing?
Should the purpose of this thread be to discuss Robert Keating's announcement, then why choosing a subtitle like '..if you believe that you will believe anything!'? Do you have some other related and reliable information which contradicts the annoucement and which unfortunately you didn't share with us so far? Otherwise, just imagine someone pro-ODP starting this thread with a subtitle like '.. if you don't believe that, believe whatever you want!'. I'm sure you would have appreciated. ;) Or did I miss an important point somewhere?
[edited to remove a typo]
[edited by: senox at 12:46 pm (utc) on July 19, 2003]
My own: Despite anything AOL or Netscape may do, the ODP exists. It's editors exist, the data exists and the reason the editors invest time there exists.
If AOL and Netscape were to dry up and blow away, would it surprise anybody if the ODP data were transferred to another server and the editors just kept on doing what they do? It shouldn't. It is a tremendous amount of data and represents a tremendous amount of work on the part of many. It has mana. It represents an intellectual energy resource that y'all keep dipping into.
In direct opposition to the idea and oft-expressed opinion that we ODP editors should be paid, then do as we're damned-well told; I'd make a contribution to move the ODP data to a new server if it were required.
To me, AOL is just that nuisance that makes free with my mailbox and infests the world with coasters. Netscape? Don't use it myself.
There are no immediate plans to move DMOZ (or ChefMoz) under the Mozilla Foundation
...its immediate.
Given the free use licence ODP has, would it really matter is AOL/Netscape bowed out anyway? That data has got to be stored at at numerous entities all over the world who are granted the right to use it with attribution. With a little infrastructure, any of them could simply continue building it.
Given all the ongoing upgrades and a statement from the editor in chief that Dmoz will be unaffected, for the immediate future its probably safe to believe ODP will be unaffected.
If that was some bean counter somewhere making those statements who had no clue about what ODP was, then it might be reason to wonder.
