jaxws-maven-plugin resolving WSDL location relative to class location, why?

You should use jaxws-maven-plugin version 2.3 instead of 2.1 and the result will be as you would expected.

The output of version 2.3 like this (if your wsdl folder is under src/main/resources):

URL url = <Any>.class.getClassLoader().getResource("wsdl/anywsdl.wsdl");