Github user afs commented on the issue:
https://github.com/apache/jena/pull/312
I was being frivolous!
For us, apps don't depend on the top POM, they depend on `apache-jena-libs`
+ whatever else they want.
We do need the top POM to have org.apache::apache` as parent to inherit the
Apache std release setup. (The thought of writing and maintaining our own
release process is unattractive to me.) So our top POM is internally focused,
for better or worse.
A BOM has to be shared internally and externally so it is the top of the
parent hierarchy. We _may_ be able to use `<scope>import` but whatever we have,
if there is a super-BOM (beyond `apache-jena-libs`), we then have a new module
... in which case removing `jena-project` is the wrong thing to do at the
moment.
No rush to make this change but aiming to change once would be better,
especially if across a release.
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