the gnuhoo directory went live on june 5, 1998. after richard stallman and the free software foundation objected to the use of "gnu" in the name, "gnuhoo" was changed to "newhoo". yahoo! then objected to the use of "hoo" in the name, prompting a proposed name change to "zurl". prior to switching to "zurl", newhoo was acquired by netscape communications corporation in october 1998 and became the open directory project. netscape released open directory data under the open directory license. netscape was acquired by aol shortly thereafter and dmoz was one of the assets included in the acquisition.