Using Maven definitely makes it easier to incorporate open source projects like World Wind for Java into other projects.
Maven makes team development easier, because everyone is synchronized on the same JAR versions.
Maven support does require some effort. But the effort gets reused by all project clients. Somebody has to deal with dependency problems once and everyone gets to benefit.
A specific example where Maven would make versions clearer. We're incorporating both the server and the SDK into our application. The server releases (latest Jan 2010) are currently lagging the SDK releases (latest April 2010). Right now, I can't get the server code to compile because of this error
C:\rw_apps\dev\Maxview\MVServer\WorldWindMapServer\src\main\java\gov\nasa\worldwind\servers\wms\generators\BILGenerator.java:[40,12] cannot find symbol
symbol : class DataDescriptor
location: class gov.nasa.worldwind.servers.wms.generators.BILGenerator
The root cause appears to be that I'm compiling the server against the wrong worldwind.jar SDK version. But I can't easily determine the worldwind.jar SDK version included in the server release. We're building worldwind.jar SDK from source. So I'm having to compile the server against various SDK versions until I find a match.