Google Android - The Android Log

So you saw the Android announcement and decided you wanted a piece of that US$10million in prize money huh? In the week since the SDK was released more than 4,300 people have joined the Android support forum posting more than 4,000 messages between them. Robert Scoble doesn’t know a single developer playing with Android – perhaps Scoble doesn’t hang around with many developers?

Painful flashbacks are beginning to torment those of us who lived through the Java wars between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft that began 10 years ago.

Earlier this week, Google released programming tools for its Android mobile-phone software project that shun the existing Java standard-setting process in favor of a Google-specific variety. Sun responded on Wednesday by expressing concern that Google’s Android project could fragment Java into incompatible versions.

“Anything that creates a more diverse or fractured platform is not in (developers’) best interests,” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun’s software work, speaking to reporters at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. “The feedback from developers is, ‘Help us fix this.’”

He said Sun wants to work with Google to nip any problems in the bud. “We’re really interested in working with Google to make sure developers don’t end up with a fractured environment. We’re reaching out to Google and assuming they’ll be reaching out to us to ensure these platforms and APIs will be compatible so deployment on a wide variety of platforms will be possible,” Green said.