JGroups expects to find a resource /VERSION.properties in the classpath from its jar file.
But other libs may expect the same resource in the classpath from their jar files.
This would cause a conflict and JGroups would fail to initialize its Version class, with an IllegalStateException and NoClassDefFoundError:
https://github.com/belaban/JGroups/blob/master/src/org/jgroups/Version.java#L59

Of course, it has happened:
https://github.com/javamelody/javamelody/issues/511

It could be suggested to rename or move VERSION.properties in jgroups to avoid conflicts.