[HADOOP-11519] ExcludePrivateAnnotationsJDiffDoclet uses GPL derived code

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 2.6.0
• Component/s: tools
• Labels: legal
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Emmanuel Bourg
• Created: 29/Jan/15 14:28
• Updated: 29/Jan/15 14:31

Description

Hi,

I think there may be a license issue with the JDiff library used by ExcludePrivateAnnotationsJDiffDoclet. JDiff is licensed under the LGPL, but it actually contains a class ported from GNU Diff which is licensed under the GPL. This means that the whole library should be considered GPL and cannot be used by Apache.

The GPL file in JDiff is DiffMyers.java:
http://javadiff.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/javadiff/jdiff/src/jdiff/DiffMyers.java?revision=1.2&view=markup

It was translated from analyze.c in GNU Diff:
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/diffutils.git/tree/src/analyze.c?id=v2.7

The code structure, variable names and comments are highly similar, so there is little doubt the code was copied and inherits the original GPL license.

Issue Links

• is related to: MAPREDUCE-4413 MR lib dir contains jdiff (which is gpl)