Most DMOZ editors are still unable to log in to their editor dash board, and the public is still unable to submit new sites. The directory should have been back to normal Tuesday last week, but due to a power struggle this has not happened. So what are the issues?
DMOZ was launched in June (or July?) 1998 with a directory structure partly based on the Usenet structure. The company that owned DMOZ NewHoo was bought by Netscape and the directory was then known as the Open Directory Project, and it quickly became quite popular. Back then the search engines were not very useful and I really thought that this directory could keep up with the exponential growth of websites. And for a long time things went really well for DMOZ, as early as in the first half of 2000 DMOZ had outgrown Yahoo. After some time Netscape became a part of AOL and then AOL bought Time Warner. DMOZ was only a small part of a huge corporation; some considered the directory to be just some dead flesh that needed to be removed, while others looked at a potential further value of the directory. With the current directory model DMOZ has no income, only expenses. AOL was not willing to a whole lot of resources maintaining the directory.
A year ago it was decided that the DMOZ automatic backup of the editor server would be discontinued and the support for the directory would be cut. A group of editors wanted to form an Open Directory Foundation; however AOL was unwilling to let the directory go. Everybody can make a mirror or fork of the directory, but the directory itself is the property of AOL. This corporate ambivalence towards the directory is still present to day.
On October 20th this year DMOZ just about almost died due to a complex hardware failure. Due to the lack of complete backups, it was almost impossible to restore the directory with a complete back end. So it decided to also take the DMOZ research server off-line and replace the directory with a static copy. The directory would still look the same to the public, but there would be no new submitted sites from the public, nor any new edits from the editors the editors. In other words: “Time to die”.
The ambivalence continues. After a few days it was decided that it would be possible to restore the directory using various data sources, mainly the public RDF and some of the earlier backups. The November 8th the editor server was partly restored, enough to force AOL to make an effort to get the directory back on line.
Last week the editor server should have been made available for all editors and the public should have been able to submit new sites, but it did not happen why? Well your guess is as good as mine.
On the other hand there are a lot of editors that want to make major changes to the directory, to make it more open and web 2.0 like. And there are strong forces lobbying for an Open Directory Foundation independent of AOL. With the information I have today I predict that 2007 will be the year DMOZ becomes independent and goes 2.0 or it will be the year DMOZ dies for real. If AOL decides to kill the project I am certain that there will be several web 2.0 forks of the project.

This post based on several sources, but facts have not been checked.
[tags]AOL, DMOZ, Open Directory Foundation[/tags]