Short on Your License

BSD 3-Clause License

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

BSD 3-Clause is a short, permissive license that adds one constraint MIT does not: you cannot use the names of the original authors or contributors to endorse or promote products derived from the software without specific written permission.

In practice, the rules are nearly identical to MIT. Choose BSD-3-Clause if the no-endorsement clause is important to you or your project has historical BSD heritage.

How to apply

Add a LICENSE file with the full BSD 3-Clause text at the root of your project, filling in the copyright owner and year.

ISC License

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

ISC is a permissive license produced by the Internet Systems Consortium. It is functionally identical to the simplified BSD license and the MIT license — use, modify, distribute, include the copyright notice — but uses even fewer words.

It is npm’s default license for new packages, which is why you’ll see it on a lot of small JavaScript libraries.

How to apply

Add a LICENSE file with the full ISC text, filling in the copyright year and holder.

MIT License

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The MIT License is one of the shortest and most permissive open-source licenses. It lets anyone use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and sell copies of the software, provided they include the original copyright notice and license text.

It is a good default for libraries and frameworks you want adopted as widely as possible. If you care about protecting against patent claims from contributors, consider Apache-2.0 instead — the patent grant is the main difference.