Java is continuing its short but increasingly strange journey from a technological fad of the moment into a useful platform for real-world applications. This was especially apparent at last week's Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif. There, a host of product announcements gave some weight to the emerging consensus that Java has moved out of the talking stage and into the implementation phase.

At the same time, a fractious battle has broken out over control of a nascent effort to forge a standard for real-time Java. The fight, first reported in EE Times, essentially pits Sun Microsystems Inc. against Hewlett-Packard Co. Although the arguments are more complex than a Merced layout diagram, they basically boil down to jockeying for control. Sun insists it wants to keep Java an open standard, while HP and its allies are afraid Sun will play Java too close to its vest.

Although the arguments over standards at first glance appear to be about controlling the technology, I view them more as a battle over marketing, branding and how to make money out of Java. That is, we're seeing the same schisms that played out in the early days of Unix.

However, for the time being, developers need not concern themselves with the standards fracas. I believe things will sort themselves out over time.

What developers do need to worry about is how to implement Java technology in environments built around real-time operating systems (RTOSes). There, the news is mostly good. The two embedded-Java heavyweights-Sun and HP-both used last week's conference to disclose advances on their respective implementation fronts.

Sun announced that its EmbeddedJava code has been completed. Sun already has at least nine licensees in the RTOS community planning to take the technology and interface it to their operating systems.

For its part, HP revealed that it will make its embedded Java virtual-machine technology available to the market under the umbrella of a product family called "Chai." (I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be enunciated New York style or as if it has four letters.)

In addition to four previous RTOS licensees, Microware Systems Corp. plans to port the Chai virtual machine to its Ariel RTOS. In addition, European vendor Enea OSE Systems has licensed the HP offering.

As Java proceeds into its product phase, its proponents would do well to remember that they have more in common than in dispute. Most ominous is their software nemesis, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows CE.