Because of the rise of Gradle usage to its inclusion as the build tool in Android Studio, there are more and more artifacts making their way into Maven Central whose POMs contain elements that do not conform to Maven expectations.
A good example is this POM: http://search.maven.org/#artifactdetails%7Ccom.squareup%7Cfest-android%7C1.0.8%7Cjar It has a dependency that uses the Gradle/Ivy version syntax of 19.1+ to indicate a range. Maven does not parse this version string and dies. So the question is what should be done about it. Some ideas: 1. Maven central starts verifying and rejecting malformed POMs with a reason for rejection. 2. Maven starts handling the Gradle/Ivy version syntax either as 1. an optional extra 2. a permanent move forward (configurable to support backward compatibility) William
