In what other ways is Android splintering?? This post talks about the sort of splintering I thought everyone was talking about when they talked about splintering: multiple devices, different hardware capabilities, different versions, carrier and manufacturer-applied customisations.
There is also splintering in the Linux sense, where the actual software is branched into a number of moderately-compatible versions that include different features, different ways to manage the software, and different interfaces.
Despite its open-source nature, we haven't actually seen any real forks of Android yet. I'm assuming that's the sort of splintering the article refers to.
Tim Bray's post (which this was responding to) seemed to be taking the position that since all Android devices run Dalvik bytecode, they're basically compatible with each other. Russ' point is that this is the wrong way to think about it.
