Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

["A. Walton" <awalton gnome org>]

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Ernestas Kulik <ernestask gnome org> wrote:
> (Attempt no. 2, since Geary hates me)
>
> Hi,
>
> As the current licensing situation in Nautilus is quite complicated, I
> and Carlos are planning a move to relicense the entire codebase to
> GPLv3+.
>
> The codebase has files under several licenses: LGPLv2+, GPLv2+ and
> GPLv3+, the latter implicitly making the project be licensed under its
> terms, so our options are quite limited here.
>
> The situation wrt extensions is also not entirely clear, as the
> extension library is LGPLv2+ with Nautilus being GPLv2+, which in turn
> disallows loading non-free extensions. Given the fact that it is not
> meant to be a generic mechanism for loading extensions, I feel like
> relicensing it without much consideration is reasonable.
>
> If there are no objections, we will make the switch in the following
> week, most likely.

My primary objection is not ideological, but practical - relicensing
Nautilus GPLv3+ means that it becomes more difficult to promote code
from Nautilus to Gtk+, which has happened a significant number of
times in the past and I expect it will continue some into the future.

Stacked with the other reasons (plugins, etc), it just doesn't seem
like a very good idea.

-Andrew Walton.

> Regards,
> Ernestas
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