Not sure I understand. Maybe the comment was not clear. With the change, if one is null and other is not, the method returns false (note the ||). However if both are null it also returns false which might be wrong as null == null. But looking at the original code, if both were null the code would throw NPE. See the original report by FindBugs, it shows the potential NPE. https://jenkins.mw.lab.eng.bos.redhat.com/hudson/view/Drools%20jBPM/view/Master/job/drools-wb/945/findbugsResult/file.-546797668/category.-675839583/source.1468/#553