diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 590a4a46b5..60c8d33ce6 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 4.0-rc1
+ * Binary releases no longer bundle the apidocs (javadoc) (CASSANDRA-15561)
  * Fix Streaming Repair metrics (CASSANDRA-16190)
  * Scheduled (delayed) schema pull tasks should not run after MIGRATION stage shutdown during decommission (CASSANDRA-16495)
  * When behind a firewall trunk is not buildable, need to allow overriding URLs (CASSANDRA-16563)
diff --git a/build.xml b/build.xml
index 192abc11f6..b7c4c4ee70 100644
--- a/build.xml
+++ b/build.xml
@@ -1055,7 +1055,7 @@
     <!--
         The javadoc-jar target makes cassandra-javadoc.jar output required for publishing to Maven central repository.
     -->
-    <target name="javadoc-jar" depends="javadoc" description="Assemble Cassandra JavaDoc JAR file">
+    <target name="javadoc-jar" depends="javadoc" unless="no-javadoc" description="Assemble Cassandra JavaDoc JAR file">
       <jar jarfile="${build.dir}/${final.name}-javadoc.jar" basedir="${javadoc.dir}"/>
       <!-- javadoc task always rebuilds so might as well remove the generated docs to prevent
            being pulled into the distribution by accident -->
@@ -1076,7 +1076,7 @@
       </jar>
     </target>
 
-    <target name="_artifacts-init" depends="jar,javadoc">
+    <target name="_artifacts-init" depends="jar">
       <mkdir dir="${dist.dir}"/>
       <!-- fix the control linefeed so that builds on windows works on linux -->
       <fixcrlf srcdir="bin" includes="**/*" eol="lf" eof="remove" />
@@ -1088,9 +1088,6 @@
           <include name="${final.name}.jar" />
         </fileset>
       </copy>
-      <copy todir="${dist.dir}/javadoc" failonerror="false">
-        <fileset dir="${javadoc.dir}"/>
-      </copy>
       <copy todir="${dist.dir}/doc" failonerror="false">
         <fileset dir="doc">
           <include name="cql3/CQL.html" />
@@ -1135,7 +1132,7 @@
     </target>
 
     <!-- creates release tarballs -->
-    <target name="artifacts" depends="_artifacts-init,gen-doc"
+    <target name="artifacts" depends="_artifacts-init,gen-doc,sources-jar,javadoc-jar"
             description="Create Cassandra release artifacts">
       <tar compression="gzip" longfile="gnu"
         destfile="${build.dir}/${final.name}-bin.tar.gz">