You may recall my previous blog on Maven Release Woes with Flat Project Structures where I described in detail how the supposed 2.0-beta-10-SNAPSHOT flat structure release support did not perform as expected.  After some back and forth with one of the Apache developers, it has come to light that this conclusion is partially correct.  The term "flat structure" is contextual and in this particular context, the Apache group's idea of context was SCM.  SCM structure is what needs to be in one of a few known structures for the release plugin to function appropriately.  In the end, another JIRA ticket was created for a different use case, albeit very similar to the previously closed ticket.  I'll review what flat structure does work and some variations that don't.