[bad_user]

Maven Central has mirrors and alternatives and you can trivially host your own repository, all you'd need is a plain web server serving a bunch of static files.

Some libraries aren't hosted on Maven Central actually, so it's not uncommon to see instructions for adding extra resolvers to your build config.

The Java ecosystem isn't as dependent on Maven Central as the JavaScript ecosystem is on npmjs.com

[brunoborges]

Almost every library out there is on Maven Central. Even Oracle JDBC drivers are now (finally) on Maven Central.

If MC goes away as it exists today, the Java Ecosystem will take a huge hit as almost every open source project would stop building in CICD environments from the get-go.

[thu2111]

If it vanished instantly then yes, but a huge number of packages on Central are mirrors from jcenter. There are not only theoretical competitors to Maven Central but an actual widely used one (jcenter/bintray), which is easier to use anyway. There's also jitpack too. So people could migrate pretty quickly to alternatives.

[sverhagen]

You're not technically wrong, but I bet that 90% of the projects or at least the examples have some sort of intentional or unintentional reliance on Maven Central, that would break the build if it weren't there. Even a lot of companies that set up internal repositories don't realize that they hit still are gonna hit Maven Central initially, before everything is bootstrapped, depending on how things are configured. It would reflect just really poorly on the Maven ecosystem (or any ecosystem alike, I have to assume, but know less about) if the canonical repository would just... "poof".

[thu2111]

It's actually really common in the JVM ecosystem to run private mirrors of Central.