What Oracle patent trick are you talking about? If you're referring to the Java suit (Oracle v. Google), the Federal Circuit didn't issue a decision that found Google in violation of any patents. Google is currently awaiting a response from the Supreme Court to Google's petition to hear the case so that it may find Google's actions to be noninfringing under copyright, not patent law.
FSF and others were safe because they used a GPL-derived IcedTea codebase (earlier Sun code). That license protected from patent abuse and many other things. Apache and Google didn't take that path and it came back to haunt them. There were many threats. If I were Stallman, I would've died of a stroke lauging (ASF was very harsh on FSF/Stallman and anti-GPL).
> FSF and others were safe because they used a GPL-derived IcedTea codebase (earlier Sun code). That license protected from patent abuse
There very definitely isn't any patent indemnification provided by the GPLv2—which is the (only) version in effect for OpenJDK. That fact is a big reason why GPLv3 exists.
> Apache and Google didn't take that path and it came back to haunt them
In what way? This question was the entire point of my last comment, but it remains unanswered.
