release plugin fails on version ranges

I have the following dependency in my pom.xml
<dependency>
<groupId>com.ften.protocols</groupId>
<artifactId>protocols</artifactId>
<version>[3.0.0,)</version>
<scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

I downloaded the source for maven-release 2.0 and installed locally.
If I specify 2.0-beta-9, then mvn release:perform functions as it should. If I specify maven-release-plugin version 2.0, I get the following error:
[INFO] Checking dependencies and plugins for snapshots ...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] FATAL ERROR
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] version was null for com.ften.protocols:protocols
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Trace
java.lang.NullPointerException: version was null for com.ften.protocols:protocols
at org.apache.maven.artifact.DefaultArtifact.getBaseVersion(DefaultArtifact.java:390)
at org.apache.maven.artifact.DefaultArtifact.isSnapshot(DefaultArtifact.java:562)