I think, the main advantage of Spring is it's less invasive and pluggable. Choose what you like/consider best fit.

>Instead of focusing on such bread-and-butter issues, so much energy is being expended on OSGi and Grails which are irrelevant for the typical java development project.

I believe Innovation can come from Grails that might help Java/Spring's cause. Those who use Spring want innovation, and it need to be written all in Java.

> so yes, Spring could become the next J2EE

I don't totally share this concern. I'm eager to see the next innovation for Spring. Also, you don't make major innovations, just about every other day, it takes time. To be fair, Spring in its current form is good enough and caters to the needs of application developers, and will most probably do so for some years to come.

Finally, today its Java and Spring, in the coming years it could be Grails and something else. As developers, we should just keep our minds open, and cultivate the ability to learn and absorb new ideas, regardless of the source.

History has proved that innovation, and solutions that really solve the needs have always been successful. Spring has been one of them. It would be interesting to see if they continue with it or someone else would take it from where they stop.

We live in interesting times. The next 2 years are surely going to be interesting for Java.