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:
“Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.”
—Donald Sinden (b. 1923)
“It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)