When a dependency have multiple exclusions, is seems like the order of groupId and artifactId are consistently, ordered inconsistently:
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>com.smxemail</groupId>
<artifactId>*</artifactId>
</exclusion>
<exclusion>
<artifactId>*</artifactId>
<groupId>smx3</groupId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
The first exclusion, puts groupId first as expected, but the second gets artifactId first.