Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[A. Walton]

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Ernestas Kulik  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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Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2017-05-18 at 15:47 -0400, Carlos Soriano wrote:
> Maybe I didn't explain well. Emilio points out there could one one of
> those extensions that say GPL2+ to link to a GPL2-only library. But
> that would make the extension itself GPL2 anyway, and it's License
> file would have to reflect that initially.

Again, it wouldn't. The combined work would be GPLv2-only, but each one
of the items keeps its own license. The licenses are compatible.

You don't have to have an piece of code depending on the exact same
version of the license if those licenses are compatible. GPLv2-only is
compatible with GPLv2+, as the license mentions for that dependency
says:
"either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version."

The selection is "made" automatically when you run those 2 items in the
same memory address space (eg. when you "link" them).

> It's just a hipotetical case, I checked the extensions dependencies
> in a quick look and look fine (>= GPL+2).
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Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2017-05-18 at 13:50 -0400, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-
list wrote:
> 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?

No. nautilus' license says "GPLv2 or later". The extension's license
says "GPLv2 only".

When you combine both licenses into the final product/memory address
space (the "linking" mentioned in the GPL license) you end up with a
"combined work" license of GPLv2.

So it was compatible, but wouldn't be any more.

As mentioned on IRC, I think that the original intent of using the LGPL
for the libnautilus-extensions library was to allow non-GPL-compatible
extensions to link into nautilus, at will. It's not like you could link
to the extensions library without also eventually linking to nautilus
itself...

If that were the case, and that might require some digging to talk to
the original authors, then you might be able to mention this in the
extensions document that was recently (and erroneously) removed.

HTH
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Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort]

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
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Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Michael Biebl]

017-05-18 18:22 GMT+02:00 Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list
:

> 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+

I found the tortoise-hg plugin in the Debian archive, which seems to
be GPL2 only
https://sources.debian.net/src/tortoisehg/4.0-1/contrib/nautilus-thg.py/


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universe are pointed away from Earth?
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