Contributor License
Effective date: July 2, 2026
Map of the Unknown is an open research commons. This page explains the licensing of both the research contributions posted on the platform and the platform’s source code.
Your intellectual property
Ownership
Map of the Unknown and the Sustainability of Sustainability Foundation do not claim ownership of your contributions. Your work remains yours.
What the platform does with your content
By posting on Map of the Unknown, you grant the Foundation a limited, non-exclusive right to:
- Store, display, and index your content according to the visibility and license settings you choose — this is necessary for the platform to function (search, feeds, thread pages).
- Generate technical representations of your content (such as summaries, keywords, embeddings, and structured metadata) for the sole purpose of enabling platform features: search, discovery, recommendation, and classification. These representations are internal to the platform infrastructure and are not published or distributed as standalone works.
- Exercise the rights granted by the license you selected. For example, if you choose CC BY 4.0, the platform — like any member of the public — may use that content in ways the CC BY license permits (with attribution). If you choose All Rights Reserved, the platform does not gain any additional usage rights beyond storing, displaying, and generating the technical representations described above.
The Foundation does not separately sell, sublicense, or commercially exploit your All Rights Reserved or NonCommercial content. Any future integration with affiliated infrastructure (such as research databases or API services) that goes beyond what your chosen license already permits will require your explicit, separate opt-in consent at that time.
Research contributions & licensing
- You keep ownership of and authorship credit for everything you post.
- Each contribution carries a license you choose at the time of posting. The default depends on your access mode:
License defaults by access mode
| Access mode | Default license | Can change? |
|---|---|---|
| Free & Open (public) | CC BY 4.0 | You may choose any CC license at posting time |
| Priced | All Rights Reserved | You may change to any CC license (opening up) at any time |
| Collaboration | Map of the Unknown Collaboration License | Relicensed when collaboration completes |
| Private / Shared / Sealed | No license granted | License applies only when content is visible to others |
Irrevocability of Creative Commons licenses
All Creative Commons licenses are irrevocable per the CC legal code. Once you publish a contribution under CC BY 4.0, you cannot later change it to “All Rights Reserved” or add NonCommercial / NoDerivatives restrictions. You can, however, stop distributing the work — but anyone who already received it under the CC license retains their rights. The platform shows a confirmation dialog whenever you select an irrevocable license.
You can always open up: All Rights Reserved → any CC license. You just cannot restrict after opening.
Available license types
- CC BY 4.0 — Attribution. Anyone may use, even commercially.
- CC BY-SA 4.0 — Attribution-ShareAlike. Derivatives must use the same license.
- CC BY-NC 4.0 — Attribution-NonCommercial. No commercial use.
- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — NonCommercial + ShareAlike.
- CC BY-ND 4.0 — Attribution-NoDerivatives. No modifications.
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — Most restrictive. Non-commercial, no modifications.
- All Rights Reserved — Traditional copyright. Others need your explicit permission.
- Map of the Unknown Collaboration License — Shared with accepted collaborators under the Map of the Unknown Collaboration Covenant.
Attribution & credit
The platform records credit across multiple dimensions (idea, data, method, analysis, validation, and more). This attribution travels with your work; reuse under any CC license must preserve it.
Source code
The Map of the Unknown codebase is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Code contributions are accepted under the same license.
This is a prototype policy and may be refined before general availability. See the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.