The ISC license is a
permissive free software license published by the Internet Software Consortium, now called
Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). It is functionally equivalent to the
simplified BSD and
MIT licenses, but without language deemed unnecessary following the
Berne Convention.
Originally used for ISC software such as
BIND and
dig, it has become the preferred license for contributions to
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking N ...
and the default license for
npm packages.
The ISC license is also used for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
wireless drivers contributed by
Qualcomm Atheros.
License terms
When initially released, the license did not include the term "
and/or", which was changed from "and" by ISC in 2007.
stated on the BIND mailing list that the ISC license started using the term "and/or" to avoid controversy similar to the events surrounding the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seat ...
's refusal to allow distribution of the
Pine
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family (biology), family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanic ...
email software.
OpenBSD license
The OpenBSD project began using the ISC license in 2003, before ISC added the term "and/or".