License (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The text of The Inversion of Greatness and the content of this website are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) — free to read, share, translate, and build on with attribution, but not for third-party commercial use. The source code that builds the site (Quarto config, scripts, CSS/JS) is under the MIT License.

The licenses

Why CC BY-NC 4.0 for the text

  • The information stays open: anyone may read, copy, redistribute, translate, and build on the work at no cost, in any medium or format — while preserving attribution.
  • Third-party commercial use is not permitted under CC BY-NC 4.0. The author separately reserves the right to authorize or undertake commercial uses; copies already released under this license remain available under its terms.
  • Compatible with PhilArchive, Zenodo, and institutional repositories.
  • Compatible with citation in print monographs and journal articles without permission requests.
  • Reversible in spirit (future works can be re-licensed) but irrevocable for the copies already released — the published version stays open in perpetuity.

Why MIT for the source code

  • Standard for static-site build tooling.
  • No copyleft entanglement with the prose (CC BY-NC and MIT layer cleanly).
  • Lets others fork the site infrastructure for their own scholarly projects.
Note

Web build only — everything below this line is build/repo material. The LICENSE.md file, the front-matter notice, and the footer spec are canonical sources for build artifacts and are not part of the rendered site page.

Repository file — LICENSE.md

The block below is the canonical contents of the LICENSE.md file at the root of the public repository. Paste verbatim.

# License

## The text and website content

*The Inversion of Greatness: From the Nature of Necessity to Maximum Possibility* and the contents of this website are licensed under a
**Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0)**.

You are free to:

- **Share** — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- **Adapt** — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

- **Attribution** — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- **NonCommercial** — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- **No additional restrictions** — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Full license text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode
Human-readable summary: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

## The source code

Any source code in this repository (build scripts, Quarto configuration, CSS, JavaScript, and tooling) is licensed under the **MIT License**:

> Copyright (c) 2026 Procyon
>
> 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.

## Citation

For recommended citation forms and persistent identifiers, see the How to Cite page: https://inversionofgreatness.org/how-to-cite

## Third-party material

Quotations from third-party works are reproduced under fair use / fair dealing for purposes of criticism, comment, and scholarship. Each quotation is attributed to its source in the references.

---

Copyright © 2026 Procyon. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC 4.0 (text and content) and MIT (source code).

Front-matter notice (for the printed book and the PDF)

A shorter human-facing notice should appear on the copyright page of the print and PDF editions. Suggested wording:

The Inversion of Greatness: From the Nature of Necessity to Maximum Possibility © 2026 Procyon. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Source files and build tooling are licensed under the MIT License. The full license text is available at LICENSE.md in the project repository.