Why Maven project is tied to J2SE-1.5 by default?

Question

If I create default empty based on no archetype Maven project in Eclipse, it will be based on J2SE-1.5.

Answer 1

It's consistent with source and target settings of maven-compiler-plugin, which are 1.5 by default.

If you change them, generated project will use different version of as well:

    org.apache.maven.plugins
    maven-compiler-plugin
    3.1
    
         1.7
         1.7
    

Note that if you change compliance settings of Eclipse project without changing of maven-compiler-plugin settings, your Maven builds would be inconsistent with your Eclipse environment.