This is really two questions. Or maybe three. Can you edit it to be a single one? Personally, I'm most interested in the Grails part and I'd probably weigh in on that, but I'll see which way you take it.

You can't edit the text of an Ask HN submission, only change the title.

I tried asking exclusively about the future of Grails a few days ago but it didn't work out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9986602. This time I thought I'd cast a broader net; the questions I'm asking are not exactly unrelated anyway.

> Will Groovy survive outside of Gradle?

It might not survive even inside of Gradle. As Gradle becomes more popular, I can't imagine Groovy remaining the only scripting language available for Gradle build scripts. Virtually all serious software offers a choice of scripting languages for configuration, e.g. Maven which can be configured not only with Groovy but also Clojure, Scala, and Ruby, see https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven . Gradle 2.0 has virtually no Groovy code in its codebase, only what was essential for hosting Groovy for build scripts, so that might give a clue about their future intentions. One snag may be the retrenched Groovy programmer employed by Gradleware after VMware/Pivotal abandoned Groovy: he might sabotage any effort by Gradleware to diversify from Groovy as a scripting language for Gradle builds.