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Credits and licences
Atlas builds maps from open data and open-source libraries. This file lists every source, its licence, and what Atlas does about attribution. It ships inside the extension (assets/licences/) and in the repository.
Map data
Natural Earth (World module: countries, states, coastlines, lakes, rivers, roads, railways, places, airports, ports, time zones, urban areas, disputed areas, graticule). Version 5.1.2, bundled. Public domain: "Natural Earth is in the public domain. You may use the maps in any manner, including modifying the content and design, electronic dissemination, and offset printing." No attribution is required; Atlas adds none. https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/ Beyond the bundled themes, Data → Natural Earth themes fetches any other theme of the same release (v5.1.2) on demand from the project's GitHub release (raw.githubusercontent.com, no key or account) into Atlas's cache; the data is public domain like the rest, and nothing else is sent or read. Natural Earth's five 50m world rasters (Natural Earth II with shaded relief, land cover and water; hypsometric tints with relief; the ocean bottom; grey relief with the ocean bottom; grey relief) are fetched the same way, once each and only when chosen, from naciscdn.org (no key or account), as a raster base or an imagery backdrop; public domain, no attribution required, none added.
OpenStreetMap (City module: streets, water, parks, buildings, railways, place and street names, points of interest). © OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. Attribution is required for any use: Atlas adds an ATLAS Attribution layer reading "© OpenStreetMap contributors" to every composition that holds OSM-derived layers, and the Settings tab explains that turning it off makes the credit the user's responsibility. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
OpenFreeMap (the online tile service for the City module). OpenMapTiles schema, no key, no account, commercial use allowed. Requested attribution: "OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap". Its terms (updated 14 October 2026) let an app download tiles for offline use in pieces of at most 3,000 tiles or 50 MB, with at most 4 parallel requests and a User-Agent naming the app: Atlas fetches at most 4 OpenFreeMap tiles at once across the whole panel, names itself and its version in every request, keeps what it fetched in its disk cache, and a single build stays well under 3,000 tiles. https://openfreemap.org/tos/
Style thumbnails (the style gallery's cards). The small piece of street map on each card is drawn from a fixed sample of central Chester: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL, from OpenFreeMap tiles in the OpenMapTiles schema; the piece of world map is Natural Earth. The sample ships inside the panel and is only ever drawn there, as a swatch of a style.
Protomaps PMTiles (region files the user downloads for offline City maps). Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL; Protomaps basemap builds under the Protomaps terms. Atlas never downloads from the Protomaps bucket itself. https://protomaps.com
AWS Terrain Tiles (terrain hillshade, contours, elevation bands and route elevation profiles). Mapzen terrarium tiles on the AWS Open Data registry. Attribution is required in a form reasonable for the medium: Atlas writes the short line "Terrain: AWS Terrain Tiles (Mapzen, USGS, NRCan, Kartverket and others)" into the attribution layer, and the full credit the data's licences ask for is below; put it in the credits or the description of a piece that uses terrain. https://registry.opendata.aws/terrain-tiles/ and https://github.com/tilezen/joerd/blob/master/docs/attribution.md
* ArcticDEM terrain data DEM(s) were created from DigitalGlobe, Inc., imagery and
funded under National Science Foundation awards 1043681, 1559691, and 1542736;
* Australia terrain data © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2017;
* Austria terrain data © offene Daten Österreichs – Digitales Geländemodell (DGM)
Österreich;
* Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government
Licence – Canada;
* Europe terrain data produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the
European Union - EU-DEM layers;
* Global ETOPO1 terrain data U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
* Mexico terrain data source: INEGI, Continental relief, 2016;
* New Zealand terrain data Copyright 2011 Crown copyright (c) Land Information New
Zealand and the New Zealand Government (All rights reserved);
* Norway terrain data © Kartverket;
* United Kingdom terrain data © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right
2015. All rights reserved;
* United States 3DEP (formerly NED) and global GMTED2010 and SRTM terrain data
courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.NASA GIBS (Blue Marble, MODIS and VIIRS imagery, night lights 2012 and Black Marble 2016, ASTER GDEM shaded relief; the day/night globe). NASA imagery is not copyrighted and may be used commercially, provided nothing suggests NASA endorses the use; GIBS asks for acknowledgement, in full: "We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS)." Atlas writes the short line "Imagery: NASA GIBS" into the attribution layer; the full sentence belongs in the credits or description of a piece that uses GIBS imagery. Cloud map: NASA Visible Earth (public domain). https://nasa-gibs.github.io/gibs-api-docs/
EOxCloudless (Sentinel-2 cloudless) by EOX (optional global 10 m imagery, as a backdrop or a raster map's base; EOX renamed the product from Sentinel-2 cloudless, s2maps.eu, to EOxCloudless, cloudless.eox.at, in 2026). Only the 2016 and 2017 editions are used: the service's own WMTS capabilities state CC BY 4.0 for both layers (read 2026-09-17 and 2026-10-15), and EOX's licence page names "2016", whose product holds 2016 and 2017 data, as CC BY 4.0; the 2018 and later editions are CC BY-NC-SA and are not offered by Atlas. Atlas writes EOX's own credit, "Imagery: EOxCloudless https://cloudless.eox.at by EOX IT Services GmbH (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2017)", into the attribution layer, or "… data 2017 & 2016)" where the 2016 edition is used or fills the 2017 mosaic's blank tiles (over much of North America, Central Asia and the Sahara, found 2026-09-22). Re-check the capabilities and https://cloudless.eox.at/license-non-commercial before each release.
National orthophoto services (optional imagery backdrops; each adds its own credit line to the attribution layer):
| Service | Region | Licence stated by the publisher | Credit written |
|---|---|---|---|
| USGS The National Map (USDA NAIP) | United States, not Alaska (its imagery is licensed SPOT data "provided for viewing"), to zoom 16 | US public domain | Imagery: USDA, USGS The National Map: Orthoimagery |
| swisstopo SWISSIMAGE | Switzerland | Open government data (OGD), attribution required; the centres of the 20 largest lakes are Planet imagery with its own credit | Imagery: © swisstopo; includes material © (2016-2018) Planet. All rights reserved |
| basemap.at | Austria | CC BY 4.0 (Open Government Data Österreich) | Datenquelle: basemap.at |
| PDOK Luchtfoto | Netherlands | CC BY 4.0 | Imagery: Beeldmateriaal.nl, via PDOK |
| IGN PNOA | Spain | CC BY 4.0 (scne.es) | Imagery: PNOA CC BY 4.0 scne.es |
| IGN France (Géoplateforme) | France | Licence Ouverte 2.0 (source and date required) | Imagery: IGN-F / Géoplateforme, BD ORTHO, [the year it was fetched] |
| ČÚZK | Czechia | CC BY 4.0 | Imagery: ČÚZK, [the year it was fetched] |
| Geoportal.gov.pl (GUGiK) | Poland | Open data (Polish geodetic law), attribution required | Imagery: © GUGiK, geoportal.gov.pl |
A custom tile URL is the user's own arrangement with that provider; Atlas adds the credit the user types.
Place search online (optional): Photon (komoot's public instance), serving OpenStreetMap data under the ODbL; results are shown with "© OpenStreetMap contributors". Atlas asks after a pause in typing and names itself in every request; heavy use of the public instance is throttled. Atlas does not use Nominatim, whose usage policy forbids search as you type from an app. https://photon.komoot.io
Terrain Light by EOX (a styled world base map: relief, land cover and water from OpenStreetMap, Natural Earth, SRTM, GlobCover and other open data, rendered by EOX IT Services GmbH; tiles.maps.eox.at, no key). EOX's WMTS capabilities require attribution in the form of their demo map ("Terrain Light { Data © OpenStreetMap contributors and others, Rendering © EOX }"), which Atlas writes to the attribution layer with a link back to maps.eox.at, as EOX's maps page asks ("Terrain Light by EOX (maps.eox.at): data © OpenStreetMap contributors and others, rendering © EOX"); unlike the EOxCloudless 2016 and 2017 layers it names no Creative Commons licence, so its terms are "free with attribution and a link back" as EOX states them and must be re-checked with EOX before a release (2026-09-23, 2026-10-15).
Public map styles (Style tab → More → From a URL…, fetched only when the user picks one; Atlas reads the style's colours, widths, font, halo, dashes and hillshade into a preset of the user's own and none of its tiles, sprites or fonts). VersaTiles Colorful, Eclipse (colorful-dark), Graybeard (gray), Neutrino (muted) and Shadow (gray-dark), tiles.versatiles.org/assets/styles/…/style.json: each style's metadata says CC0 1.0, the code (versatiles-org/versatiles-style) is MIT; no credit needed, none added. OpenFreeMap Liberty, Bright, Positron, Dark (Dark Matter) and Fiord, tiles.openfreemap.org/styles/…: the styles' code is MIT (hyperknot/openfreemap-styles); their designs are CC BY 4.0 from OpenMapTiles (Liberty and Bright after Mapbox Open Styles' OSM Bright; Positron, Dark Matter and Fiord Color after CARTO's basemaps, designed by Stamen and Paul Norman), so a preset made from one carries its design credit ("Map design: Positron, © OpenMapTiles and CARTO (CC BY 4.0)" and the like) and Atlas writes it to the attribution layer of every map in that style. Checked 2026-10-05 and 2026-10-15 against each repository's LICENSE.md and each style's metadata; re-check before a release. A style the user brings by address, a Mapbox style with their own token or a MapTiler map with their own key is theirs to be entitled to; Atlas sends a token only to the service it belongs to and keeps it only when asked.
Open data sources (Data → Import a file → Open data; fetched only when the user asks, kept beside the project like any imported file, no key or account): USGS earthquake feeds (public domain, no credit required); NASA EONET natural events (public domain, no credit required); The World Bank indicators API (CC BY 4.0; Atlas writes "Data: The World Bank (CC BY 4.0)" into the attribution); geoBoundaries (William & Mary geoLab, CC BY 4.0 for the gbOpen sets; "Boundaries: geoBoundaries (CC BY 4.0)" in the attribution); OpenStreetMap places through the Overpass API is not offered in this version (the main public instance's entry on the OpenStreetMap wiki asks commercial use to self-host or pay, and the instance that welcomes any project was down at release); points exported from Overpass Turbo can be brought in through Choose a file, as any file can, and since they are OpenStreetMap data the credit "© OpenStreetMap contributors" is then the user's to add, as for any file they bring; OpenFlights airports (airports.dat from the OpenFlights project on GitHub, Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0, its airport data derived from OurAirports and DAFIF, which OpenFlights states are public domain; fetched once, 1.1 MB, kept beside the project; once fetched, airport codes in a table of flows resolve through it and Atlas writes "Airport data: OpenFlights (ODbL)" into the attribution of every layer it placed; the bundled Natural Earth airports are the offline fallback and need no credit). From a URL fetches whatever address the user gives; the data's licence is the user's to check.
Membership lists (EU, NATO, G7 and the other groups used by Highlights) are hand-maintained in Atlas and dated in the product; they are not third-party data.
Software
| Library | Licence |
|---|---|
| d3-geo, d3-geo-projection | ISC |
| topojson-client | ISC |
| pmtiles | BSD-3-Clause |
| @mapbox/vector-tile, pbf | BSD-3-Clause |
| polygon-clipping | MIT |
| React, ReactDOM | MIT |
| Bolt CEP (vite-cep-plugin) | MIT |
| MapLibre GL JS 5.24 | BSD-3-Clause |
| proj4 | MIT |
| fflate | MIT |
MapLibre GL JS (BSD-3-Clause; the open-source fork of mapbox-gl-js 1.x, maintained by the MapLibre organisation). Draws the City preview in the Map tab (2026-10-12): a GPU map of the same OpenStreetMap tiles Atlas builds from, read through Atlas's own tile sources (the disk cache or the user's region file), in the current style. Bundled in the panel (version 5: its worker is part of its bundle); it fetches nothing of its own, needs no key or account, and shows the tiles' attribution on the preview. The built map is still drawn by Atlas's own renderer.
fflate (MIT). Inflates and deflates zip members and compressed GeoTIFF strips on import, and compresses the PNG frames of a particles bake. Bundled in the panel; nothing is fetched.
proj4 (proj4js, MIT). Converts a data file's coordinates from a national grid (British National Grid, RD New, Lambert-93, UTM zones and the others Atlas lists) to longitude and latitude on import. Bundled in the panel; nothing is fetched. Atlas carries its own definitions for those grids; a file's .prj well-known text is read as well.
File formats read by Atlas's own code (no third-party library): Excel workbooks (.xlsx; a zip of XML read with Atlas's zip and XML readers, dates from the workbook's own number formats), plain JSON tables, CSV / TSV (with WKT geometry in a column), GPX, TCX, FIT (Garmin's binary format, read from the published record layout; no Garmin SDK is used), KML / KMZ, GTFS feeds (a zip of tables), shapefiles, GeoPackage (a reader of SQLite's file format for one table scan and of the GeoPackage binary geometry and WKB; SQLite itself and sql.js are not shipped). TopoJSON is read through topojson-client (above). Nothing is fetched to read a file, and no format's reader phones home.
Data build tooling (mapshaper, topojson-server, topojson-simplify) runs at build time only and is not shipped.
Atlas MCP connector (assets/ai/atlas-mcp.cjs, and the same file inside Atlas-MCP.mcpb). Bundles the Model Context Protocol TypeScript SDK (@modelcontextprotocol/sdk, MIT) with its dependencies zod (MIT), zod-to-json-schema (ISC), ajv and ajv-formats (MIT), fast-deep-equal (MIT), json-schema-traverse (MIT) and fast-uri (BSD-3-Clause). It talks only to the Atlas panel on the same computer.
Licensing and the effect
aescripts + aeplugins licensing framework, © aescripts + aeplugins, used under the author agreement and not open source: the CEP framework in the panel (4.1.20) and the C++ framework in the Atlas Particles effect (4.1.7a) read one licence file and run the 14-day trial. Activating, deactivating and checking a licence contact aescripts' licence server (license.aescripts.com).
Adobe After Effects SDK. The Atlas Particles effect is built with Adobe's After Effects Plug-in SDK (its headers and utility sources), under Adobe's SDK licence. Nothing of the SDK ships but the compiled effect.
Fonts
Bundled in the panel UI: Hanken Grotesk and IBM Plex Mono, SIL Open Font License 1.1 (licence texts in assets/fonts/). Map presets name fonts that are set by name in After Effects (Inter, IBM Plex Serif, IBM Plex Mono, Lora, Montserrat, Space Grotesk and Source Sans 3, all OFL; Roboto, Apache 2.0; Helvetica Neue, a system font) and fall back to the machine's default when a font is not installed; none is bundled for maps.
Texture tiles
The texture overlay (Style → Finish → Texture) ships eleven tiles in assets/textures/: nine photographs downsampled to a 1536 px long side, their brightness evened out by the build so each shows at the same opacity, and two generated film grains:
- Canvas, Linen, White paper, Grey card, Crumpled paper, Ribbed kraft, Kraft paper: ambientCG (Fabric001, Fabric032, Paper001, Paper002, Paper003, Paper004, Paper005), CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication). No credit is required; ambientCG asks for none.
- Rough paper, Old paper: Mooviemakers' own photographs, released CC0 1.0 for Atlas.
- Fine film grain, Coarse film grain: generated by Atlas's own build script (
data/build/textures.mjs, seeded noise), CC0 1.0.
A tile the user adds from their own files is referenced by path and never copied or shipped.
Pin designs and presets
Atlas's own artwork and colour work. No third-party templates.
Not used
No Mapbox, MapTiler, Google, Esri or other keyed or paid service is called by Atlas on its own. No account is created for any map or data service and Atlas ships no key. A key or token the user types in for a service of their own (a custom tile URL; a Mapbox token or MapTiler key in Style → From a URL) is sent only to that service, and kept on that computer only when the user ticks Remember.
Last checked against the publishers' pages: 2026-10-15. Re-check before each release.