title: How to add license metadata to maven dependencies?
body: <p>When I add a dependency to my maven projects, I like to add some comments to indicate what it is, and what license it's released under, for example:  </p>
  
  <pre><code>    &lt;!-- XML parser --&gt;
      &lt;!-- Apache License, Version 2.0 --&gt;
      &lt;dependency&gt;
          &lt;groupId&gt;xerces&lt;/groupId&gt;
          &lt;artifactId&gt;xercesImpl&lt;/artifactId&gt;
          &lt;version&gt;2.9.1&lt;/version&gt;
          &lt;scope&gt;compile&lt;/scope&gt;
      &lt;/dependency&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My main concern is being able to check (manually, for now) that the licenses are all compatible with one another.  The <a href="http://maven.apache.org/pom.html#Licenses" rel="nofollow">pom.xml documentation</a> states:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Note that a project should list only licenses that may apply directly to this project, and not list licenses that apply to this project's dependencies.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Is there a better way to capture this metadata?  Maybe a way to "override" the <code>&lt;licenses&gt;</code> information from a dependency's POM if it's missing?</p>