Frequently asked questions

No, and we say so in every license text. The Open Source Definition maintained by the Open Source Initiative forbids discrimination against persons, groups, or fields of endeavor. Every ISL license restricts fields of endeavor — that is their entire purpose. The same is true of other ethical licenses such as the Hippocratic License and the Do No Harm License, which OSI and FSF likewise classify as non-free.

ISL-P, ISL-C, and ISL-R are source-available, ethically restricted licenses. ISL-EULA is proprietary. We believe honest labeling is itself an Islamic obligation. We document the full reasoning on why we say not open source.

Declaring a thing halal is a religious ruling, and the Quran warns against pronouncing lawful and unlawful without knowledge (Quran 16:116). In practice, "halal" labeling implies certification by a recognized authority, as it does in food and finance. We make no such claim.

"Islamic" describes what these licenses are: texts rooted in Islamic principles. Whether any particular use of software is halal is a question for qualified scholars, not for a license file.

No one, and no. These licenses are the work of a Muslim software developer acting in good faith, not the ruling of a scholar or Shariah board. They quote the Quran to state their motivation, not to claim authority. We explicitly invite review by qualified scholars, and the texts will be revised if such review finds fault in them.

Yes. Every variant permits commercial and non-commercial use alike, subject to the ethical restrictions. ISL-P and ISL-C let you build and sell products on the software; ISL-R permits use, including internal commercial use, without modification or redistribution; ISL-EULA is a template for licensors selling closed-source products. There is currently no non-commercial-only variant; one may be added if there is demand.

Sections 4 and 5, identical across the family, prohibit use of the software in service of: shirk (idol worship), riba (usury and interest-based finance), pornography and sexual exploitation, maisir (gambling), khamr (intoxicants), the pork industry, unjust weapons use, tobacco, fasad (corruption and moral subversion), gender ideology and bodily mutilation, zina and fahisha (extra-marital relations and lewdness), abortion, and — at the state level — genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, torture, and association with regimes engaged in them. Read Section 4 and Section 5 of any license for the operative definitions, including the "Primary Business" test that determines when an entity falls under a prohibition.

The licenses provide notice and a cure period: an ethical violation must be remedied within the stated cure window or the license terminates. ISL-P and ISL-C additionally terminate the patent grant of anyone who initiates patent litigation over the software. As with any license, enforcement ultimately runs through copyright law and the courts of the governing jurisdiction.

The Waqf GPL, published by the Arabic free-software community Ojuba.org, is the earliest Islamic software license we know of and an honored precedent. ISL-C borrows its central insight: releasing software to the community is akin to a waqf, a perpetual endowment whose benefit continues — sadaqah jariyah. The ISL family differs in carrying explicit ethical use restrictions, which the Waqf GPL does not.

Yes to both. The licenses restrict activities, not persons or beliefs. Anyone may use ISL-licensed software for any purpose the license permits, and any author who shares these values may apply an ISL license to their own work.

They are drafted with care in the manner of established software licenses, but they have not been tested in court and have not yet been reviewed by counsel. Every text carries a disclaimer to that effect. If you intend to rely on an ISL license for a significant project, have it reviewed by a lawyer in your jurisdiction, and by a qualified scholar for the religious framing.

Apply the licenses verbatim and identify them by their SPDX identifiers (LicenseRef-ISL-P-1.0 and so on) so the names retain meaning. If you need different terms, draft your own license under a different name rather than publishing a modified text as an "ISL" license. Future official versions are handled by the Future Versions section of each text.