What is a standard? Hmm… let me look:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/standard
1. "Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence"
2. " Widely recognized or employed as a model of authority or excellence"
3. "Commonly used or supplied"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/standard
1. "something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example"
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/standard
1. "a basis for comparison; a reference point against which other things can be evaluated"

You can clearly see that the words used are: excellence, commonly used, model or example etc. . ., which perfectly fits Spring manifesto The fact that it was so widely adopted by the community as a more superior programming model then J2EE is a perfect testament to that, and because it is so widely adapted by the true community makes it a defacto standard
And btw, JCP is not about standards. It is a process that attempts to dictate how things should be done and is heavily influenced by 800 gorillas (to promote their agenda and products) and not the community.

I'll take standards any day. Seam rules … no JBoss AS required. Nice hair cut by the way.

This one seemed different IMO: I have seen numerous Sun licenses but none with Red Hat in it. That is why I didn't proceed (yet) – I like to know what I agree to first, and I just need some time to look into the legal terms first.

"Clearly you have some misconceptions about JSR-299, that arise from you not having read the spec."

It certainly seems so, doesn't it? However, and again: whatever little I know is based on the abstract that is right there, on the JSR page – maybe it could be improved so that it reflects the nature of the spec?

That license is the standard boilerplate evaluation license that the JCP requires for JSRs. We were asked by Sun to add it to the spec. I'm sure you've agreed to the same license many times for other JCP specifications.

Clearly you have some misconceptions about JSR-299, that arise from you not having read the spec. Sorry, but the need to agree to the standard JCP evaluation license doesn't really excuse you for making uninformed comments .

Sorry, I missed your comment earlier.

By this metric, Spring overtook JBoss almost 3 years ago, and has since pulled far ahead.

Really, it seems you are totally wrong, or maybe I'm missing something?
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q="java spring", "jboss"&l=

You are indeed missing something. No one searches for the literal string "java spring". You need to use "and" to search for jobs mentioning both Java and Spring. Then you get exactly the comparison I described: Spring long ago overtook JBoss as a skills requirement and has since pulled far ahead.

Rgds
Rod