JSR 244 started yesterday, is the specification request for the next release of the J2EE platform spec, 1.5.
The key goal of 1.5 is for ease of development. This may mean increased use of metadata (being introduced in J2SE 1.5) to allow developers to specify class behavior (eg, markup tags to signify an EJB) by using tags similar to XDoclet’s approach, or maybe some other approach.
I think the key for J2EE 1.5 is they have to make a solid commitment to where the EJB spec is going. Hibernate and JDO are already showing a large following, and if the EJB spec does not follow in a similar approach, in particular with Entity Beans, then I think the use of Entity Beans will become irrelevant.