spring mvc 3.x with jboss 4.x

Yikes, I hope no one has to deal with the kind of crazy that is attempting to deploy a brand new app on an ancient server.

If you're running into problems with EL being ignored in your JSTL tags, make the following fixes to web.xml:

1. Change the root tag to reflect a web-app version 2.4

<web-app version="2.4"
  xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

2. If problems still persist after re-deploy, also add this block to the file:

 <jsp-config>
  <jsp-property-group>
  <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
  <el-ignored>false</el-ignored>
  </jsp-property-group>
 </jsp-config>

Source: isELIgnored="false" (JSP forum at JavaRanch)