# Third-party notices Empires Globe's own code is MIT licensed (see `LICENSE`). It bundles or uses the work listed below. Every item is public domain, CC BY 4.0, or under a permissive MIT/BSD-style licence. Keep this file when you redistribute the project. ## Summary | Component | Where | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | | Cliopatria v0.2.1 (Seshat Global History Databank) | `data/history/`, simplified by `scripts/build_history.py` | CC BY 4.0 | | Natural Earth 1:10m land, lakes, rivers (and 1:50m land for Chukotka) | `data/basemap.json`, simplified by `scripts/build_basemap.py` | Public domain | | Astronomy Engine 2.1.19 by Don Cross (`astronomy.js`, ES module build) | `vendor/astronomy/`, unmodified | MIT | | three.js r160 (`three.module.min.js`) and `OrbitControls.js` | `vendor/three/`; `OrbitControls.js` modified (mouse-wheel zoom step, see below) | MIT | | Stellarium sky culture "Arabic (Al-Sufi)" by Khalid al-Ajaji: `index.json`, `description.md` | `data/sky/al-sufi/`, unchanged | CC BY-ND 4.0 | | Constellation drawings from manuscripts of al-Sufi's *Book of the Fixed Stars*, as prepared for that sky culture | `data/sky/al-sufi/illustrations/`, unchanged | Public domain | | Star positions, magnitudes and colours (XHIP, Anderson & Francis 2012) and modern constellation lines (d3-celestial by Olaf Frohn), via the hub's Night Sky Live | `data/sky/stars.json`, `iau.json`, `names.json`, by `scripts/build_sky.py` | BSD-3-Clause (d3-celestial) | | Proper motions from the HYG database v4.4 (astronexus) | the `pmra`, `pmdec` columns of `data/sky/stars.json` | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | Go fonts (Regular, Medium, Bold, Italic, Smallcaps) by Bigelow & Holmes | `fonts/`, subset to Latin, Latin-1 and Latin Extended-A and converted to WOFF2 by `scripts/build_fonts.py` | BSD-3-Clause style (Go font licence) | Nothing is loaded from a CDN, font service or any other site. The only outside page the app links to is a territory's Wikipedia article, opened only when the visitor taps its link; no Wikipedia content is stored in this repository. Capitals and great cities (`js/places.js`), famous roads and battles (`js/routes.js`), tour texts, moments and sky events (`js/data.js`) were compiled and written for this project from standard historical facts. Routes are simplified to their main stations; dates and places are approximate, especially in antiquity. The cartoon warriors in `js/soldiers.js` were drawn for this project. ## Cliopatria (CC BY 4.0) Historical borders come from **Cliopatria**, a geospatial dataset of the world's polities from 3400 BCE to 2024 CE, part of the Seshat Global History Databank. - Source: https://github.com/Seshat-Global-History-Databank/cliopatria (release v0.2.1; also on Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/records/13363121) - Described in: *Scientific Data* (2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04516-9 - Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ **Changes made** (as the licence asks us to indicate): - Records of Type `RELATION` (alliances, vassalages, personal unions) are left out. - Union outlines whose names are in parentheses (for example "(British Empire)") are left out, because their member polities are drawn on their own. - A polity's first `MemberOf` group is kept as its colour group, so colonies share the colour of their empire. - Polygons are simplified (Douglas–Peucker, 0.02° ≈ 2 km), parts under 0.003 square degrees (≈ 35 km²) are dropped, and coordinates are rounded to 0.01°. - Names that are wrong for their years are corrected: "Golden Horde" records of 1547–1635 are named Northern Yuan, those of 1636–1690 Khalkha Mongols and those of 1691–1695 Khalkha Mongols (under the Qing) (the Golden Horde ended in 1502); "Western Jin" records from 313 are named Jin dynasty, from 324 Eastern Jin, and the 417–425 record Eastern Jin, then Liu Song (from 420) (the Western Jin fell in 316); "Later Jin Dynasty" from 1636 is named Qing Dynasty; "Nicaean Empire" from 1260 is named Byzantine Empire (Constantinople was retaken in 1261); "Republics of the Soviet Union" in 1920–1921 is named Soviet Russia and allied republics (the USSR was founded in December 1922); "Kuomintang" is named Republic of China, and after 1949 Republic of China (Taiwan). - Further corrections to names and years (about 200, from the Kingdom of Macedon before 334 BCE to the Taliban after 2001), dropped stray records, and parts of United States records cut out where the source draws occupation zones or other states as US territory (Liberia, Greenland and Iceland, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Okinawa after the occupations, Vietnam, Iraq) are listed one by one, with their reasons, in `scripts/history_fixes.py`. - The source leaves the Bolshevik-held core of Russia blank in 1918 and 1919. `scripts/fill_history_gaps.py` draws it as Soviet Russia from the 1920 outline, within the Russian Republic of 1917, minus everything else drawn in each year. These two outlines are approximate. - "Byzantine Empire" records end in 1453 and "Latin Empire" records in 1261; a stray 1206–1226 Byzantine outline is left out. - The Republic of China after 1949 is clipped to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (the source also covers Hainan and Zhoushan), with its area figure scaled to match. - The source stops at the 180th meridian. For records that reach it in Chukotka, the land east of it (from Natural Earth, public domain) is added. - A label point is computed for each record, and records are split into era files. - Names, years, areas and Wikipedia references are kept as published. Colours, labels and the gold highlight of guided tours are added by this app. The borders of ancient polities are approximate, and historians disagree about many of them. Cliopatria's maintainers welcome corrections through their repository. ## Natural Earth (public domain) Land, coastlines, lakes and rivers in `data/basemap.json` are converted from Natural Earth 1:10m `ne_10m_land`, `ne_10m_lakes` and `ne_10m_rivers_lake_centerlines` (simplified with a 0.012° tolerance and rounded to 0.01°). Made with Natural Earth. > All versions of Natural Earth raster + vector map data found on this website are in the public domain. You may use the maps in any manner, including modifying the content and design, electronic dissemination, and offset printing. > — https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/ ## Astronomy Engine (MIT) `vendor/astronomy/astronomy.js` is the ES module build of Astronomy Engine 2.1.19 (https://github.com/cosinekitty/astronomy), unmodified. It computes the Sun, Moon, eclipses and ΔT in the browser. ``` MIT License Copyright (c) 2019-2025 Don Cross Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. ``` ## three.js (MIT) `OrbitControls.js` is modified in two places, both marked "Empires Globe change": the mouse-wheel zoom step no longer divides by `devicePixelRatio | 0` (which is 0 when a page is zoomed below 100%, making one notch jump to the zoom limit), and wheels that report lines or pages are scaled to pixels. ``` The MIT License Copyright © 2010-2023 three.js authors Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. ``` ## Go fonts (BSD-style) ``` These fonts were created by the Bigelow & Holmes foundry specifically for the Go project. See https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts for details. They are licensed under the same open source license as the rest of the Go project's software: Copyright (c) 2016 Bigelow & Holmes Inc.. All rights reserved. Distribution of this font is governed by the following license. If you do not agree to this license, including the disclaimer, do not distribute or modify this font. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * Neither the name of Google Inc. nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. DISCLAIMER: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. ``` ## The sky view (`data/sky/`) **Arabic (Al-Sufi) sky culture.** Author: Khalid al-Ajaji. From the Stellarium sky cultures repository (github.com/Stellarium/stellarium-skycultures, folder `arabic_al-sufi`). Text and data: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/). The files are distributed unchanged; the page reads them as they are. Illustrations: public domain (drawings from manuscripts of al-Sufi's *Book of the Fixed Stars*, c. 964). Sources are listed in `data/sky/al-sufi/description.md`. **HYG database v4.4** by David Nash (astronexus), codeberg.org/astronexus/hyg. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Only the proper motions are used, matched by Hipparcos number into `data/sky/stars.json`; that file's proper-motion columns are shared under the same licence. **Stars and modern constellation lines.** Positions, magnitudes and colour indices from XHIP: An Extended Hipparcos Compilation (Anderson E., Francis C., 2012, Astronomy Letters 38, 331), with the IAU constellation lines as adapted by Olaf Frohn, both through d3-celestial (BSD-3-Clause; full text in the hub's `night-sky/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md`). ## Pictures (Wikimedia Commons) The pictures in `assets/culture/` are from [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/), each under an open licence: public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA. They are resized to at most 720 px. Each picture's title, author, licence and source page are listed in `data/culture/credits.json` and shown under the picture in the app. Pictures under CC BY-SA remain under that licence. The pictures in `assets/items/` (one for each great work, scientist, good, road, tour stop and moment) come from Wikimedia Commons on the same terms: the lead picture of the item's English Wikipedia article when that file is on Commons under an open licence, otherwise an open-licence Commons search result (`scripts/fetch_item_images.mjs`). Title, author, licence and source page for each are in `data/items/credits.json` and shown under the picture in the app.