It is functionally equivalent to the simplified BSD and MIT licenses, but without language deemed unnecessary following the Berne Convention.

[7] The ISC license is also used for Linux wireless drivers contributed by Qualcomm Atheros,[8] as well as by the LV2 plugin system.

[12] Paul Vixie stated on the BIND mailing list that the ISC license started using the term "and/or" to avoid controversy similar to the events surrounding the University of Washington's refusal to allow distribution of the Pine email software.

[13] Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD chose to retain the original wording, stating that he "disagrees with what ISC did" and is "not confident that their change is good" because "some country's legal systems might not understand 'and/or' in the way the old 'or' was used in the sentence".

[17] The GNU project states the inclusion of "and/or" still allows the license to be interpreted as prohibiting distribution of modified versions.