Not sure if I'm mistaken but isn't the major thing about this the TCKs? As far as I'm aware they are the keys to kingdom for alternative Java implementations. Never shared by either Sun or Oracle so if and when this happens it will be a good thing™.
You're correct. In the old days that was the case. They were shared but only for money. These days Tomcat, TomEE and Payara can't claim Java EE compliance because they don't have a TCK. It is not clear to me wether this would also retroactively include the Java EE 8 TCKs. It is important to note that Oracle does not transfer the Java EE brand name. So whatever comes out of Eclipse can't be named Java EE 9. You can't make this stuff up.
