> So how is this "JVM world" escaping the grip of Oracle?

Why would you? What is the point of "escaping"? It is like asking, "how would Go world escape the grip of Google?" — no one cares to, because nobody asks Oracle for permission to make software for JVM.

Java EE has been in maintenance mode for a long time, but Spring and Dropwizard are alive and well despite that. Incidentally, Nginx Unit has recently implemented Servlet spec — a cornerstone of JEE! — but they are stuck at it's initial version, without asynchronous Servlet support. Maybe Oracle should give Nginx a couple of decades to catch up before drafting next JEE version...