Java/JBoss Performance Profiler Dilemma--any good free ones?

We're at that stage in our project when we're considering the performance of our application. We believe that it could be better, but we don't have a good set of data to point to bottlenecks. One of the reasons we don't have this data is because we aren't using a performance profiling tool. We aren't using a performance profiling tool because we aren't aware of on ethat works with our application server, JBoss, that fits our budgetary constraints, i.e. free.

At one of the discussions during the fall Twin Cities No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium an attendee asked the expert panel and the room if anyone is using an open source performance profiler and no hands were raised. This was a group of over 300 software professionals in the region and 10 expert developers and nobody could recommend an open source profiler, and there were no outstanding recommendations for any of the commercial profilers eaither.

When we look for performance profiling tools that fit that description they're either commercial and over $500, too steep for a personal license and we don't have time to evaluate competing profilers to put a proposal together for our client to buy licenses.

I've used JProbe and Optimizeit in the past, they've produced valuable data. Most of the projects I'm on though don't have commercial profilers available.

I would think that there would be an open source profiling tool available. I thought that Java 1.5 was supposed to have features that would make getting performance information easier and someone would have taken advantage of that.

If anyone has any recommendations for profilers free or otherwise, I'd love to hear them.