Central Repository is an revolution of Open Source. Now we have a unique, global software artifact standard (although not officially). It’s amazing.
The next question is How to Make it Right.
In the most situation, we cannot request an Open Source Authors take the responsibility to maintain their product to the eternity. We cannot assurance that everybody can understand and use Maven in exactly right way either. Maven is still far away from 1-click use software. And the infrastructure of the distribution system of Maven Artifact Repository is even more complex.
Maven is a collaborating system since everyone has the right to commit their own work. But Maven is lack of collaboration functionality. The POM.xml need to be corrected by other who is more familiar with Maven; the source code need to be uploaded; dependencies on unnecessary artifact should be set to optional…. all those actions need to be well tracked and synchronized around the world. It’s much more difficult since it a distribution system.
Wikipedia is the most greatest thing in the age of Web 2.0. So Maven would learn a lot from the success model.
After the day