Thanks @mseaton for the leads. I could as well reproduce the issue on a fresh install. I’ve tried a number of things but finally I realize that the culprit is the <mvc:annotation-driven/> declaration in webModuleApplicationContext.xml of the mUzimaCore module. The annotation implicitly enables validations on controllers, which in this case leads to loading of the OptionalValidatorFactory that conflicts with the one declared in app framework.
The annotation was introduced as part of the fix to support newer OpenMRS versions, but per this reference, it should be enough to have just deleted the deprecated DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping. So I think for @fumba a remedial fix would be to delete that line and test further.
@mseaton some of the dependencies/code in the module should actually be removed, e.g the javarosa validator since it’s no longer in use. I’ll look into it. Thanks.