Currently the namespace chosen in the settings XSD is the same as the one chosen in the POM XSD. This causes conflicts e.g. when using XML catalogs to resolve the XSD files (e.g. when using the WTP/XML Catalog support in Eclipse): POM XSD : http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd POM example: <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd"> ... </project> Settings XSD : http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd Settings example : <settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd"> ... </settings> Having one namespace pointing to two different XSD files, depending on whether you're editing a POM or a settings file isn't a good idea. Question : can't the namespace of the settings XSD be changed or would this have too much of an impact on M2 (e.g. when M2 currently uses a namespace aware parser to parse the XML files)?