[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/586202/best-practices-for...
The only reason i don't like maven is not because of its rigidity, but because of its network dependence. To use maven, you really need to run your own repository server, and that comes with huge overheads. I m warming up to the idea of always mandating offline mode in maven, and then check in to the scm a preloaded repository which includes all the libs and plugins for your project, and never have to worry about external repos, or network connectivity.
You can also push libraries into the repository that aren't open source, and know that you've done so.
Running a maven repository doesn't take much. Sonatype's basic offerings are fine and quite effective.
If "network dependence" is an issue for you, you could check in your ~/.m2 directory iff you don't want to run a repository server and you're deploying to many machines that have access to source control (which you probably do if you're running maven on that machine) and you don't have access to the internet. Then it's almost like a Ant 'lib' directory type of build, but with version information, docs, and sources all available if you want it and easily refreshed when you do have network access.
