The popular open source Spring Framework for Java has reached the 1 million-downloads mark, Rod Johnson, the founder of the framework, said in a blog on Friday. “The true total is probably much higher, as this figure does not include nightly builds or the other sites from which Spring can be downloaded,” said Johnson, who is a consultant with Interface21. A final release of Spring 2.0, meanwhile, is due later this month, featuring aspect-oriented programming enhancements and XML extensions. Spring 2.0 serves as the basis of the Pitchfork Project, which is an add-in for the framework performing dependency injection based on Java Specification Request 250 as well as annotation processing and EJB 3.0-style interception. Also, Acegi Security for Spring, which provides security extensions, will be moved into the heart of the Spring family, Johnson said. It will be called Spring Security.Spring Web Flow, for Web application page flow, also is to be released soon. The upcoming Spring OSGi integration, meanwhile, “will strengthen Spring’s value as a basis for server infrastructure and offer benefits to users in the area of componentization, versioning and dynamic deployment,” Johnson said.Also afoot is the Spring .Net integration project, which is a port and extension of Spring for .NET. Software Development