>>>What we are doing is forcing EJB on people that want a transactional bean. That's really the problem that I see.
Yeap, this is a problem and mistake. Besides,  EJB technology is much more than transactions.(security, pooling, clustering, integration, messaging etc.)

Also, *transaction* is a generic term. Java EE defines distributed transactions over JTA and JTS specifications. Web containers do not required to implement those specifications. 

If you do not like to use EJB transaction demarcation model, there are several choices that people can use for their web applications

1* Manage your JTA transactions over third party Transaction Managers
2* Give up it to the Java EE containers.
3* Do not use JTA, then manage your JDBC connections with your own solutions or some third party libraries

But each one has also an advantage or disadvantage? If you look at EJB 3.1 specification, it is very very easy to integrate lots of cool functionality into your application.

Thanks;

--Gurkan