A bunch of developers have got together to form a team headed by Mario Torres and David Fu to create an alternative to the Dalvik JVM in Android. The idea is to replace the licence-hobbled Dalvik with something based on OpenJDK which they're calling IcedRobot (following the pattern of the IcedTea plugin for Java support in browsers).

If Android would run under OpenJDK, it would be possible to run it and all Android apps on any desktop: Linux, OS-X or QNX. QNX is a well-engineered microkernel OS that originally would fit on to a single 1.44 Mb floppy. By the way, if you noticed the absence of Windows in that list, Torres said this, "I don‘t care about Windows, and I believe the worst thing we ever did was to allow Windows users to alleviate the pain by sharing the good Free Software tools".

The full article is at eweek: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/IcedRobot-Android-Fork-Seeks-to-Preclude-Oracle-Litigation-717475/.

In a parallel story, semi-official 'rumours' have been floated by RIM about their attempt to roll their own Dalvic-replacement VM in order to Android apps to run on their upcoming PlayBook tablet thingie. The PlayBook OS is built on QNX.

Finally, Indian software outfit Myriad has announced its plans to release an alternative VM called Alien Dalvik that also aims to allow Android apps to run on non-Android devices.

One way or another, it looks like it won't be long before Android escapes from its pen and into the wider world.