Spring IDE is not required to use Spring, so just import Spring banners. If you are using maven, you should add these dependencies to your pom, and not import them directly.
The seam does not use Spring (they are competitors).
The Spring IDE basically gives you autocompletion in xml files, checks for xml files at compile time, not runtime, and (when using Spring AOP) gives you some nice icons in the code editor 'to show junction points.
SpringSource Tool Suite ( ) Spring . Eclipse ( , , Eclipse).