Hello,

I am Jimmy Wales, CEO of Bomis, Inc. We produce the popular search
engine and web directory http://www.bomis.com/ . We aren't Yahoo
in terms of popularity, I'm afraid, but we do have around 60 million
monthly pageviews.

I was a very early adopter of the ODP data as soon as the open content
license was adopted. My name appeared an early San Jose Mercury
newspaper article about the project, and I was interviewed as to
what's so great about the ODP project.

I have no specific complaints about ODP, and I have never been an editor.

However, I do very much like the idea of an alternative project to
provide competition. I am concerned about the possible threat to my
business of having a primary source of supposedly "community" data
available only via a service run by AOL/Time Warner, my largest
competitor. I would feel much more comfortable with a more grass
roots organization.

I very much think that sites like
http://www.angelfire.com/journal/wizardofdmoz/

Are *extremely bad* for your cause. I would advise the author to take
the site down immediately, before the xodp movement gets branded in a
negative light. (If not take it down, at least get rid of the foul
language and rewrite it in a more "positive" way.)

What is needed is a sincere dedicated and truely *community* project
to supplement and stand ready to reply the ODP. I would stand ready
to support such a project by adopting the data immediately.

I would hate for the xODP group to be seen as primarily a negative
reaction against something. It should be a postive movement *for*
something.

--
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* Win My Ferrari! http://www.bomis.com/ferrari/ *
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