>Cause you change the resolution of thousands of existing pom and all their >consumers?
I understand the concern about ecosystem impact. My view is that the net effect would be positive, especially if MNG-7852 (aligning on the highest compatible version) lands as well. Maven 4 already introduces the “consumer POM.” It seems reasonable to apply improved resolution rules (e.g., consider transitive <dependencyManagement> globally, and prefer the highest version) for consumer POMs. That gives a clean, forward-compatible path. For Maven 3, this could remain opt-in (extension or flag). For Maven 4, we could default to the new behavior for consumer POMs and keep a toggle for legacy builds if needed Today, resolution can yield surprising downgrades when multiple modules from the same family are present. Even advanced users occasionally stumble on this in demos (example at 1:58:07: https://youtu.be/2kooPqDguyw?t=7087 ). If a user truly needs a strict lower version, that’s inherently risky. We can support it explicitly (e.g., a clear strict version intent), rather than letting accidental downgrades happen implicitly. If there are specific POMs you believe would break under these rules, could you share one concrete example (before/after tree)? That would help us verify the impact. Vladimir
