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.

All fourteen ISL variants are ethically restricted licenses. Thirteen of them are source-available; ISL-EULA is proprietary and licenses no source code at all. We believe honest labeling is itself an Islamic obligation. See the full list of licenses or the choosing-a-license guide to pick one, and 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, with most variants. 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 or running them as a hosted service. If you'd rather restrict use to non-commercial purposes only, ISL-NC (software) and ISL-CW-NC / ISL-CW-NC-SA / ISL-CW-NC-ND (creative works) do that. See the full list of licenses or the choosing-a-license guide for the complete picture.

Yes — though the reason differs by variant, and until now nothing on this site said so. ISL-P, ISL-C, ISL-LC, ISL-NETC and ISL-NC permit modification outright and each carries its own Section 6 (Contributions), under which a contribution arrives licensed on that same license's terms. ISL-R is the exception: it has no contributions clause, and prohibits modification "without prior written consent from the Licensor". That clause is a permission mechanism rather than a flat bar — a signed contributor agreement is that consent, so an ISL-R project can accept a patch without relicensing and without weakening Sections 4 and 5.

The family publishes ISL-CLA for both cases, currently a draft not yet in force. For ISL-R it supplies the consent (Section 2, which applies wherever the license grants no right to modify or adapt — ISL-R, ISL-CW-ND and ISL-CW-NC-ND, and no other variant). For the rest it does what those licenses' own Section 6 expressly leaves to "a separate written agreement": it takes a grant broad enough to ship a contribution in a commercial build, which the default terms do not allow, and it adds the employer and disclosure representations the default terms omit. Section 6 of the agreement, prohibiting AI-generated contributions, is optional — a modifier a project opts into, like NonCommercial on the creative-works licenses. See how to apply for what a maintainer needs to decide.

Sections 4 and 5, identical across the family, prohibit use of the software in service of: shirk (idol worship), riba / interest (any surplus over the original principal amount), 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-1.2 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.