The Open Directory License is a public copyright license that was used by the Open Directory Project for its content.
Unlike open source licenses, the Open Directory License expressly forbids its applicability to software or open content hosted elsewhere. Time Warner (via the Netscape Communications Corporation) owns the compilation copyright to its unique selection of website listings (links, titles and descriptions) in the open directory on dmoz.org. As a practical matter, this includes the layouts, and the categories, and does not extend to the content Dmoz links to, or the actual links themselves.
The Free Software Foundation describes the ODL as a non-free license, citing the right to redistribute a given version not being permanent, and the requirement to check for changes to the license.
Famous quotes containing the words open, directory and/or license:
“Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodes ... assumptions about the nature of our reality, the “pattern” in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.”
—Donald Sinden (b. 1923)
“All is possible,
Who so list believe;
Trust therefore first, and after preve,
As men wed ladies by license and leave,
All is possible.”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)