Copyrights, Protections, and Terms of Use
"Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright."
~ U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 1: Copyright Basics, p. 2
With respect to any proposal for calendar reform, a case can be advanced for making the proposal openly free for use, without copyright,1 and releasing to the public domain a body of royalty-free, open-source documentation of the arithmetic necessary for performing calendrical calculations within the reform system. Arguably, this openness encourages standardized, error-free implementation of the reform calendar in a multitude of computer systems, and also enables ready conversions of dates that predate the onset of the proposal.2
The Extended-Range Secular Calendar aspires to this open state over time, so as to facilitate its possible implemen- tation by organizations, societies, and even nations. However, due to the unusual principles upon which the calendar is based, and the relatively complex arithmetic necessary to perform calculations of leap years, the XRS Calendar is not an open-source project for the time being. Its source code and implementation details are proprietary. Details of the implementation are available only to those persons who are authorized to view them; these may include (but are not necessarily limited to) examiners charged with reviewing possible applications for patent protection.3 The full implementation will not be released to the general public until (1) adequate protections for the software process that drives this calendar have been secured; (2) native apps have been developed by this author, and the market for these apps has been firmly established.
In what follows, the term "Author" shall refer to the inventor of the Extended-Range Secular Calendar, who also authored this website. The Author shall retain all rights to the material contained in this website, except as granted in the licensing stipulations below, and subject to the warranty and liability limitations below. Readers who have questions as to whether their use of materials from this website is properly authorized should contact the Author.
Text Citations
For academic purposes primarily, anyone is free to cite text passages from this website as long as the Author's written permission has been granted for these purposes. No one may reproduce any portion of the text without written permission; please contact the Author to request permission, or if you need clarification of these terms of use. It will be helpful if you include in your request some context in which the Author's material is to be used. If you are granted permission to quote, paraphrase, or cite any text passage of this website, please include a proper citation as appropriate, whether in a footnote and/or bibliographic reference for non-digital media, or similar citation on the face of the webpage for digital media.
Fair Use of the XRS Calendar Date-and-Time Clocks
License: For those who may be interested, the Author grants a conditional license to reproduce and publish the XRS Calendar date-and-time clocks to their website or blog, as long as (1) these clocks are intended for educational, noncommercial purposes only; (2) proper written permission is obtained from the Author; (3) a proper citation of their source is provided as well, generally in the form of a prominent link to this website; and (4) all of the Author's other rights are preserved. At his discretion, the author may also assist in this incorporation into your website or blog, sometimes for a nominal fee. Any other uses, including, without limitation, allowing the source code or its output to be accessed, used, or available to others, are strictly prohibited.
Warranty: In granting limited license to others for reproduction and publication of these clocks to other websites, the Author provides no warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Limitation of Liability: You acknowledge and agree that the Author shall not be liable to you or any third parties for damages of any kind, including without limitation, any lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of, or related to, the use, inability to use, or accuracy of calculations performed by, the XRS Calendar date-and-time clocks, nor shall the Author be liable for the breach of any express or implied warranty, even if the Author has been advised of the possibility of those damages.
Limitation of Licensee Remedy: You acknowledge and agree that, if the Author has assisted in implementing the XRS Calendar date-and-time clocks within your website or blog for a fee, your exclusive remedy (in law or in equity), and the Author's entire liability with respect to the material herein, for any breach of representation or for any inaccuracy of the application, shall be a refund of the aforementioned fee.
Please see also the section below titled Further Disclaimers. Note also that the foregoing warranty may give you specific legal rights which may vary from state to state in the United States of America.
Fair Use of the XRS Calendar Demonstration Apps
License: The three web-based demonstration apps in this website—the calendar demo app, the date conversion app, and the day-of-week conversion app—are designed and intended entirely and solely to educate readers about the properties of the Extended-Range Secular Calendar. Otherwise, they are not intended for any use, whether commercial or noncommercial. Readers are granted by the Author a limited license to reproduce and/or publish the results of making conversions with any of these apps, or otherwise report results generated by them, just as long as (1) reproduction or publication of said results is exclusively for educational, noncommercial purposes; (2) the proper permissions are obtained, and appropriate citations made; please see the section above titled Text Citations for applicable provisions regarding fair use. That said, any reproduction or publication of these demonstration apps to any other website or blog, whether in whole or in part, and/or reproduction or publication of any imagery pertaining thereto, and/or de-obfuscation or reverse-engineering of their source code, are strictly prohibited.
Warranty: The Author provides no warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, for any use of the three demonstration apps in this website, including, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Limitation of Liability: You acknowledge and agree that the Author shall not be liable to you or any third parties for damages of any kind, including without limitation, any lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of, or related to, the use, inability to use, or accuracy of calculations performed by, the three demonstration apps in this website, nor shall the Author be liable for the breach of any express or implied warranty, even if the Author has been advised of the possibility of those damages.
Limitation of Licensee Remedy: You acknowledge and agree that the Author provides no licensee remedy of any kind, whether in law or in equity, for use of the three demonstration apps presented in this website.
Please see also the section below titled Further Disclaimers. Note also that the foregoing warranty may give you specific legal rights which may vary from state to state in the United States of America.
Further Disclaimers
Except as expressly set forth above, the Author (1) issues no other warranties with respect to the material presented in this website, and expressly disclaims any others; (2) does not warrant that the functions embodied in the underlying source code will meet your requirements, nor that their operation will be uninterrupted and error-free; and (3) licenses the material presented in this website as is (and according to the terms stipulated above). Accordingly, the entire risk as to the quality, accuracy, and performance of all materials herein is yours should any of it prove defective (except as expressly warranted on this page).4
Image of Earth: Fair Use and Disclaimer
The large image of Earth, taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft, was downloaded from the website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sometime in 2012, shortly after this project was begun. As far as the Author can determine, this particular image is no longer available on the NASA website. The Author is grateful to NASA for its willingness to extend limited license to others for use of its images for a variety of purposes, commercial and noncommercial. This license is granted with the understanding that usage is not intended to imply NASA's endorsement of any concept or commercial product put forth in the website or blog in which the image is used. Accordingly, let it be stated here that in no way should the image of Earth on this website be construed to imply NASA's endorsement of the Extended Range Secular Calendar, whether in concept or implementation, nor should it be construed to imply NASA's endorsement of any commercial product that may arise in consequence of the concept or implementation as such.
XRS Calendar Seasonal Almanac: Fair Use and Disclaimer
The document titled Almanac of Equinox and Solstice Timings in the Extended-Range Secular Calendar, 6971 through 7570 was generated in part using solar algorithms published in Pierre Bretagnon and Jean-Louis Simon, Planetary Programs and Tables from -4000 to +2800 (Richmond, VA: Willmann-Bell, 1986), pp. 1-8 and 38-39. Use of these programs and tables is governed by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Law, which (broadly speaking) license such materials for educational uses only. Accordingly, let it be stated here that the algorithms of Bretagnon and Simon are not part of the XRS Calendar implementation, nor is the Seasonal Almanac any part of that implementation. The almanac is a separate document that is intended entirely and solely for educational purposes; is available for download free of charge to any person who wishes to use it for noncommercial purposes; and will never be incorporated by this author within any commercial product that may arise in consequence of the XRS Calendar concept or implementation. Use of this almanac for any commercial purpose whatsoever is strictly prohibited.
Notes
1. A rare yet notable exception is the World Calendar, invented by Elizabeth Achelis in 1929. This calendar was copyrighted under a very specific description to prevent misuse of its name, and corruption of the idea; see, for instance, this webpage.
2. Cf., for example, this webpage.
3. If patent protection is granted, the Extended-Range Secular Calendar will be the first calendar in human history to receive such protection.
4. The language of this page borrows rather heavily from that used in Nachum Dershowitz and Edward M. Reingold, Calendrical Calculations, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. xxviii-xxix.