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.