Permissions, conditions and limitations at a glance
Conditions
- License and copyright noticeA copy of the license and the copyright notice must be included when distributing.
Limitations
- LiabilityExpressly states that there is no liability for damages.
- WarrantyExpressly states that no warranty is provided.
Permissions, conditions and limitations are classified using data from choosealicense.com (GitHub, MIT License).
What kind of license is it?
The ISC license was used by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) for software such as BIND. It strips out language made unnecessary by the Berne Convention, expressing the same effect as MIT and BSD 2-Clause in shorter sentences. It is the license the OpenBSD project recommends for new code, and because npm's npm init command long inserted ISC as the default, it is also common in JavaScript packages.
Conditions
The permission notice is a single sentence permitting use, copying, modification and distribution "provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies". In other words, as with MIT, keeping the notice is the only condition; the rest is a warranty and liability disclaimer.
Common misconceptions
- "ISC is obscure, so companies can't use it" — It is an OSI-approved license with the same effect as MIT and is classified as permissive under most corporate policies.
- "It's just the npm default, so it means nothing" — ISC is a legally effective license too. If it is not what you intended, change the
licensefield inpackage.jsonand the LICENSE file to what you want. - "ISC is the version with no notice requirement" — The one that removed even the notice requirement is 0BSD, which is based on the ISC text.
How to apply it
Put the text in LICENSE and fill in [year] and [fullname]. The SPDX identifier is ISC.
When it fits
The same situations as MIT. Choose it if you prefer shorter wording or want to follow OpenBSD or npm conventions. That said, MIT is better known, so it is more familiar to users.
Can ISC code go into another project?
General verdicts for taking code released under this license and distributing it combined into a project under each license below. See other combinations in the compatibility checker →
| Target project | Verdict | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Proprietary (closed-source) software | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| MIT | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| Apache-2.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| MPL-2.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| LGPL-2.1 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| LGPL-3.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| GPL-2.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| GPL-3.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
| AGPL-3.0 | Allowed | You must include the original copyright notice and license text. |
The content on this site is general information, not legal advice. For actual distribution, contracts or disputes, consult a lawyer or other qualified professional.