[maven-release-plugin] copy for tag 2.8.3

Fixes Kafka by using log4j2 instead of slf4j

log4j has a means to support log4j 1.2, which is used by our Kafka 0.8
component.

[maven-release-plugin] copy for tag 2.8.2

prepare to release 2.7.6

Switches to log4j2 and aligns deps to avoid conflicts in Spring Boot

[maven-release-plugin] copy for tag 2.8.1

prepare release 2.7.5

Changes prometheus metrics to use tags instead of name encoding

Before, prometheus metrics needed parsing to determine the transport.
This leaves "/metrics" alone, but maps the collector metrics to look
normal, using tags instead.

[maven-release-plugin] copy for tag 2.8.0

prepare 2.7.4