General dependency update

[gomezgoiri]

Most of the current dependencies use quite old versions:

• JUnit 4.11 was released on November 2012.
• The Jackson version (2.1.4) currently used was released on February 2013.
• Apache Commons Codec v1.7 was released on September 2012.
• The Joda time library used was released in February 2012. Furthermore, from Java SE 8 onwards, users are asked to migrate to java.time (JSR-310).
• (The Jetty client is also outdated in the current version, but hopefully it will be updated soon)

So, would not be convenient to update these?

[brianjmiller]

This is an ongoing need, but I'm going to close this issue as I think they've all been bumped since the versions listed. Feel free to open another issue/pull request when there is an important update to a dependency, recognizing that we have to maintain backwards compatibility within major versions.