Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Carlos Soriano <csoriano protonmail com>]

Wouldn't that make the actual extension GPL2-but-not-GPL3 comaptible since the start, and therefore cannot be GPL2+ project and therefore its License file would need to reflect that?

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

Local Time: May 18, 2017 7:02 PM

UTC Time: May 18, 2017 5:02 PM

From: pochu27 gmail com

To: Carlos Soriano <csoriano protonmail com>, Nicolas Dufresne <nicolas ndufresne ca>

release-team gnome org <release-team gnome org>, nautilus-list gnome org <nautilus-list gnome org>, desktop-devel-list gnome org <desktop-devel-list gnome org>, Frederic Crozat <fred crozat net>

On 18/05/17 18:22, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list wrote:

> Hello,

>

> After asking some authors of the current code that we have as GPL3+ inside

> nautilus, and pondering for a while, I realized the practicity of moving away

> from that code or convince those authors to relicense as GPL2+ is more a burden

> than the real benefit.

>

> The only problem that arises if Nautilus becomes GPL3+ as per yesteday

> discussion in IRC at #gnome-hackers is that extensions that are GPL2-only cannot

> be used anymore.

> Keep in mind GPL2+ are fine.

>

> Said this, I took a look at extensions which are not retired from distros and

> that have seen a release in at least the last 3 years. So far they are:

> nautilus-dropbox - GPL3+

> nautilus-image-converter - GPL2+

> nautilus-pastebin - GPL2+

> nautilus-python - GPL2+

> nautilus-search-tool - GPL2+

> nautilus-sendto - GPL2+

> nautilus-terminal - GPL2+

>

> Which is completely fine.

As someone already mentioned, if any of those extensions links to a

non-GPL3-compatible library, then they won't be compatible with a GPL3+

nautilus. In other words, extensions are now forbidden from linking to

GPL2-but-not-GPL3-compatible libraries. I don't know whether there are any

examples of extensions that do this. Just thought I'd point this out so the

final decision is an informed one.

Cheers,

Emilio