Drooling: Unable to load pom.properties

Getting this error when drools tries to load my pom.properties properties:

2014-02-25 11:14:06,251 ERROR      org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(318):  - Context initialization failed
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.io.File.<init>(Unknown Source)
at        org.drools.compiler.kie.builder.impl.ClasspathKieProject.getPomProperties(ClasspathKieProject.java:228)
at org.kie.spring.KModuleBeanFactoryPostProcessor.postProcessBeanFactory(KModuleBeanFactoryPostProcessor.java:93)
at org.springframework.context.support.PostProcessorRegistrationDelegate.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(PostProcessorRegistrationDelegate.java:265)
at org.springframework.context.support.PostProcessorRegistrationDelegate.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(PostProcessorRegistrationDelegate.java:177)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(AbstractApplicationContext.java:609)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:464)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.configureAndRefreshWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:381)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:293)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:106)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4765)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5260)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1525)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1515)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

in particular, it tries to recursively search for the pom.properties file, but when it calls file.isDirectly (), it has a problem determining that its directory and NPE are thrown away. I checked that the directory actually exists and that the rights are correct ...

public static File recurseToPomProperties(File file) {
    if( file.isDirectory() ) {
        for ( java.io.File child : file.listFiles() ) {
            if ( child.isDirectory() ) {
                File returnedFile = recurseToPomProperties( child );
                if ( returnedFile != null ) {
                    return returnedFile;
                }
            } else if ( child.getName().endsWith( "pom.properties" ) ) {
                return child;
            }
        }
    }
    return null;
}