Must have been a temporary launchpad bug, nautilus bugs https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bugs were all shown as unconfirmed and unknown. Guess it's been fixed. Sorry for the bother.
-- recursive permission changing in nautilus https://launchpad.net/bugs/24460 -- desktop-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
