I just got to read this. Apparently people are way pissed of at the direction JBoss people are taking. I personally don't see much wrong about that except I am allergic to seeing business people driving techies. Rest is getting rid of business alignment trap, for which JBoss is really doing a good job. In addition, I can't agree to JEE is dying out and everything. That's just too big of a statement with no backup. What are your thoughts on this? In addition, what's the deal with Glassfish. Is the hype around it true or people are getting excited for nothing?

I think business people driving technical people is not necessarily wrong, business people should take care of requerments and make sure the system is useful for end customer, and also make sure costs are in budget so customers will buy the product and project can continue.
we technical people usually dive to much in details that we forget the overall idea of the product.
some times we spend lots of time implementing or optimizing parts of software that may never be used by customer.

some times business people don't have good overview of technical market, that is the case that usually happens in IT, some person who doesn't know about IT market starts an IT company for profit, and forces technical people to do wrong tasks.

I don't think JEE is dying, I think it is exactly opposite, it has just become mature after JEE 5, we have now other languages like JRuby, Jython, Groovy, Scala, ... on Java platform, it may be possible that in future lots of programmers switch to these alternatives, but I think Java will survive as a platform for a long  longer time, as COBOL has survived till now!

Understood, but what you explained at the begining means business people are working with the tech team. That's good and that brings a lot of value and eventually generates revenue; a true win-win situation. There are a few symptoms by which one can say if business is driving things around the house:

- Most of development time is developing features. There is not much time to go back and look at the overall architecture.
- CEO (Sales, Marketing, and similar animals) assign tasks to techies.
- Meetings are long.
- There is a dress code.
- People get yield at. Threats, harsh language and etc are similar flavours.
- Tech manager does not have so many options for motivating people. (Do you guys motivate your programmers?)
- Deadlines are tight.
- You come to work and see there is more carrots on your desk. There's got to be a stick somewhere but you don't see it so you don't know it, rabbit life baby. Carrots come in different flavours too: paid overtime, bonus, vacation, and all other creative ones; just name it.
- You have a feeling you know just as much about the customers as much you know about your you-know-which-one.
- ...

In any events, one may use this virtually for a school work in Iran (cite me and we're straight :)). However, as per my understanding the mechanics and dynamics of a company are a different beast down there. That said, you may go ahead and define the relevant symptoms.

so these people are goo business people, a true business people should only try to manage people if s/he has management knowledge, otherwise he will employ a manager to manage technical people, the symptoms you named are very obvious ones, thought in nearly all management schools.
I guess your problem is business people who don't have management knowledge or a vision on the business they are managing and are trying to manage all their business them self.