Re: Relicensing Nautilus to GPLv3+

[Michael Catanzaro <mike catanzaro gmail com>]

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 5:10 AM, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list 
<desktop-devel-list gnome org> wrote:
> Aha!
> I still get different opinions from different people on that. But 
> that makes sense to me. Probably makes sense to relicense the files 
> too at some point, but that would be a later decision.
> Do you know any advantage of relicensing the files themselves?
>
> Best,
> Carlos Soriano

The advantages of relicensing are:

* Easier to copy code into Nautilus from other GNOME projects. You 
cannot currently copy code into Nautilus from the handful of projects 
that have already transitioned to GPLv3+.
* Less confusion. It's confusing for the project license to be GPLv3+ 
while nearly all of the source code is licensed GPLv2+.
* Promote stronger, more effective copyleft. Many people believe GPLv3 
is a better license than GPLv2. See [1].

This is why I've relicensed all the source files in Epiphany.

The disadvantage is that after relicensing, it will become harder to 
copy code from Nautilus into other GNOME projects. You cannot copy into 
GPLv2+ projects unless you relicense the other project to GPLv3+ or go 
back in the commit history to before the relicensing. This is only a 
transition problem, because it can be solved by upgrading the license 
of the other project.

Michael

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.en.html