Once we labled a software componet with a version, we are not going to modify the file again. The problem is when we are in the process of developing that component and some other components are depending on it. That is where SNAPSHOT comes to play. In Mave, if we declare a dependency with a version SNAPSHOT, Maven will try to download it from remort repository everythime with time stamp check. Without it Maven will not bother to check if there is updated dependency file with the same version number or not.