JavaBeans is such a wildly successful component model that we now barely think about using it. We don't say "I'm going to write a JavaBean to do blah"; we usually just say "I'm going to write a class to do blah", and then unconsciously follow the JavaBeans conventions. We long ago forgot the original definition of a JavaBeans container (BeanBox, anyone?), and use JavaBeans just about everywhere. The JavaBeans definition is part of Java culture more than it is part of any JCP specification.