org.jacoco.examples should not be licensed under EPL-2.0

[lp-smarkwell]

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Scenario

• JaCoCo version: 0.8.13
• Operating system: N/A
• Tool integration: N/A
• Description of your use case: Concern about licensing of example code

Current Behaviour

Creating derivative code from examples from org.jacoco.examples falls under EPL-2.0 which is unexpected and defeats the point of using the code as an example.

Wanted Behaviour

The code should be licensed in a permissive fashion to allow for derivatives works as it is effectively documentation.

Possible Workarounds

None.

[marchof]

Nice catch. Any proposal how to fix this?

[lp-smarkwell]

As an "end-user", my desired end goal would be able to take some example code as a reference point to modify for interaction with an API/integration. Aka, how do you do a clean room implementation if you are starting from the example code?

My suggestion would be essentially a MIT-0 or similar license. Since EPL-2 seems to allow dual licensing if it makes sense, updating that section of the project to include that special provision may make sense.

Another option would be to maintain another repo for example code (which is potentially an undo overhead) to keep license isolation easier.

I am not a contributor so I don't know what obligations/process is required to even re-license existing code.

I expect this is purely academic. I doubt most developers would notice this detail nor if they would even see this code directly with current coding tools.

For my needs, since the functionality I was looking for existed in the CLI, I interfaced with that.

[marchof]

Changes required to fix this:

• Add note to LICENSE.md in root that it applies to all files except the examples module
• Add new LICENSE.md to examples module
• Fix headers in example sources and adjust checks in builds accordingly

[Godin]

@lp-smarkwell Thank you for raising this issue, and for sharing your thoughts about this subject! ❤️
Glad that for your needs there is a way to proceed while this issue unresolved.