I want to inject one fact, and one collection of experience, but I'm still not trying to talk anyone into anything.
Fact: the Apache Software Foundation maintains a comprehensive maven infrastructure. There is a repository manager, there are standard parent POMS. All projects that use Maven get the advantage of it. Experience: I commit on CXF, XmlSchema, and Mahout (all using Maven), and we use Maven internally at my day job. I've found the dependency system to be a great advantage. I've never seen a message to one of the mailing lists complaining that connectivity issues were making people miserable. Why? You need connectivity to update from svn. Then you need connectivity to run a build. And once you've run a build, you have all the maven stuff, and you're done until someone changes the dependencies. Keep in mind that, at a project like FOP, the goal is to produce code that other people can use and integrate. 'Central' is a discipline. If the code does not work with commonly available versions of its dependencies, that probably means that someone, somewhere, is going to have a lot of trouble using it. If Maven downloads a truckload of stuff as a result of one of your dependencies, then you have a truckload of dependencies. (Well, OK, an oversimplification. Some things have enthusiastic dependency graphs which can be pruned.) As previously noted here, Maven itself likes to download a lot of Maven. In the past, there was a design error in Maven in which it would update its internal components 'behind your back'. Aside from removing predictability from the build, this means that you could need more connectivity less predictably. Nowadays, the versions of the pieces are fixed unless you move them. So, once you've built something once, you can build --offline until and unless you decide to change a dependency. Other than dependency management, the primary virtue of Maven is the lack of build configuration. Sadly, it's bimodal: there's hardly any, and then there's much too much. The cure for that is sometimes a new maven plugin.
