ISC license

ISC license
Author Internet Systems Consortium
DFSG compatible Yes
FSF approved Yes
OSI approved Yes
GPL compatible Yes
Copyleft No
Linking from code with a different license Yes

The ISC license is a permissive free software license written by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). It is meant to be functionally equivalent to the simplified BSD and the MIT licenses, differing in its removal of language deemed unnecessary following the global adoption of the Berne Convention.[nb 1][nb 2] Initially used for ISC's own software releases, it has since become the preferred license of projects such as OpenBSD[3][4] and Node.js's npm.[5][6]

Text

A template of this license is:

ISC License

Copyright (c) [year(s)], [copyright holder]

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

History

Before accepting the license as a free software license, the Free Software Foundation asked for clarification of the text. In July 2007, as a result, "and distribute" was changed to "and/or distribute".[7] The Free Software Foundation eventually approved the ISC license as a lax, permissive free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.[8] As of May 2016, The OpenBSD template still uses the original "and distribute" phrasing,[3] due to concerns about the modified version.[nb 3]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "The ISC copyright is functionally equivalent to a two-term BSD copyright with language removed that is made unnecessary by the Berne convention."[1]
  2. ↑ "In OpenBSD we use an ISC-style copyright text [...] that is enough to satisfy every legal system on the planet which follows the Berne Convention."[2]
  3. ↑ "Watch out for the new ISC license, because the FSF lawyers have convinced the ISC to [use the] phrase "and/or" to mean "or", but some country's legal systems might not understand "and/or" in the way the old "or" was used in the sentence. I disagree with what ISC did; I am not confident that their change is good."[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Copyright Policy". OpenBSD. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
  2. 1 2 de Raadt, Theo (21 March 2008). "Re: BSD Documentation License?". openbsd-misc (Mailing list).
  3. 1 2 "OpenBSD license template".
  4. ↑ Miller, Todd C. (3 June 2003). "CVS log for src/share/misc/license.template". Add a license template; deraadt@ OK
  5. ↑ "npm-config(7)".
  6. ↑ Sikelianos, Zeke (7 February 2014). "doc: new init.license default is ISC".
  7. ↑ Vixie, Paul (20 July 2007). "BIND covered under which license and does it contain any cryptographic content?". Newsgroup: comp.protocols.dns.bind. Usenet: [email protected]. Retrieved 25 September 2007.
  8. ↑ "Various Licenses and Comments about Them - ISC License". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved 7 July 2016.


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