There are some good points, but I disagree pretty strongly with some of the premises in your blog post. I ask this quite seriously: why should I care about the health of the jvm ecosystem? Unless I am oracle, how does that fit in with my personal or business goals?

I know definitively that for me, personally, the quality of my build tool significantly impacts my productivity. Maven does not meet my personal bar and if I needed to use java for whatever reason, I'm not making a sacrifice to the altar of the jvm ecosystem purity and subjecting myself to maven.