In http://www.ibiblio.org/maven2/activemq/activemq/3.1/activemq-3.1.pom a number of the dependencies contain versions like the following. The dependencies don't download is it valid to use a variable?
<dependency>
<groupId>xstream</groupId>
<artifactId>xstream</artifactId>
<version>${xstream_version}</version>
</dependency>
