There is a lot of talk on the internet about how Maven is bad. I have been using some features of Maven for a few years now and the most important benefit in my view is the dependency management.

Maven documentation is less than adequate, but generally when I need to accomplish something I figure it once and than it works (for example, I remember when I implemented signing the jars.) I don’t think that Maven is great, but it does solve some problems that without it would be a genuine pain.

So, why does Maven has such a bad rep and what problems with Maven can I expect in the future? Maybe there are much better alternatives that I don't know about? (For example, I never looked Ivy in detail.)

NOTE: This is not an attempt to cause an argument. It is an attempt to clear the FUD.