I agree that it should automatically turn on the console listener. But I would like to go a step further and state that problems with reading the logback.xml settings should always at least print to the console by default. This is not a lot of logging and it would help a lot of people with configuration errors. Yes it could be turned off if needed, but I don't see why anyone would. One line showing the configuration file that was used, or multiple lines if it could not find a configuration file. I think this is a very sensible default. Has this been discussed? I think it would be a very user friendly default.