Re: Licensing for Nautilus extensions

[Holger Berndt <berndth gmx de>]

Hi Brian,

On Mi, 20.05.2009 14:03, Brian Cameron wrote:

>I have a co-worker who is writing a Nautilus extension.  He was 
>wondering if Nautilus extensions must be under a particular license.
>Since nautilus uses the GPL, does this imply that any Nautilus
>extension must also be GPL?  Or can any license be used for a
>Nautilus extension?

If there is a requirement, it's surely not that it must be GPL, but
that it must be GPL-compatible, giving you quite some choice [1].

In order to decide whether there is a GPL requirement in the first
place, the GPL FAQ [2] might help, especially section "Combining work
with code released under the GNU licenses". 

I would interpret [3] and [4] in a way stating that the extension must
in fact be GPL-compatible, even if the Nautilus extension library itself is
under LGPL. But IANAL either.

Holger

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
[3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
[4] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLWrapper