Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort <pochu27 gmail com>]

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