license-requirements for patches to Nautilus?



Thanks for your response, Christian; would you be able to address the
questions below? I imagine my follow-up slipped through the cracks,
last time.

The crux is: if I have aspirations of having my patches accepted into
mainline Nautilus, must I avoid depending on GPL3 libraries like the
GNU Scientific Library?

Thanks!

Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org> writes:
>
> Am Samstag, den 26.07.2008, 12:37 -0400 schrieb Joshua Judson Rosen:
> > Is Nautilus likely to move to GPLv3 at some point, or is it going to
> > stick with GPLv2 for the foreseeable future? Is this the right forum
> > for this question?
> > 
> > I'm asking because I'm working an auxiliary project that includes some
> > patches to Nautilus, and I'm trying to determine which license would
> > be most appropriate for my own code.
> 
> As of writing, I do not see any concrete reason for switching the
> license.

Has there been any discussion about it yet?

I'm not really trying to push you in that direction--I'd just be
interested in seeing whatever debate or other conversation has already
taken place, mostly just to avoid having to run everyone through it
again. :)

> On the other hand, it is quite tedious to ask each single developer
>who has ever contributed for permission.

Isn't the need for that obviated by all of the contributors having already
accepted the "or later" clause in Nautilus' application of GPL v2?

> However, feel free to submit your patches as "GPL v2 or later". If you
> like the GPL 3 and trust the FSF, it does not hurt.

Well, to actually give context (which I should have done
originally--my apologies), the specific reason why I was asking is
that the library that I've developed, to which Nautilus would link
when built witih my patches, would benefit from having a stable
PRNG-algorithm--`stable' in the sense that the algorithm is guaranteed
never to change, and also in the sense that the PRNG-library is
re-entrant and a given PRNG loop would be unaffected by PRNG calls
elsewhere in the code.

The only PRNG-library that I've found (so far) that meets
those requirements is the GNU Scientific Library, which is licensed
under the terms of GPL v3.

I'm fine with licensing my library under the terms of GPL v3, but the
question becomes: if I want to have any hope of my patches being
accepted into mainline Nautilus, should I avoid pulling in GPL-v3
libraries like GSL?

-- 
Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr)))).

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