Considering the turmoil in the mobile industry due to Apple sort-of finally deprecating UDIDs, the last thing it needed was a spat between two leading contenders for a replacement.

However, that's what's happened between Appsfire, which is promoting OpenUDID, and Crashlytics and its SecureUDID.

A messy business

The bust up is both technical and personal, with one of Crashlytics' team originally involved in the development of OpenUDID.

However, it decided to take a different approach.

"OpenUDID is predicated on having a global identifier for the device - basically the same as the now-deprecated Apple UDID," it explains in its blog post about how it came up with SecureUDID.

It says this was a new project, although one which is compatible with OpenUDID. However, it provides developers with the ability to track devices across all its apps without there being a global ID - the main privacy concern.

Stabbed in the back?

Of course, this didn't go down well with Appsfire.

Its founder Ouriel Ohayon hit back, saying Crashlytics had only been a minor player in the OpenUDID project, while also casting doubt on its claim that SecureUDID was a from-the-ground-up new project.

Perhaps more significant, however, Ohayon says that SecureUDID isn't a solution that will work for mobile advertisers because the ID is only available on a per developer basis.

Still, both open source projects may find common purpose; at least they both agree that the most popular current UDID replacement - MAC address - is the wrong answer.

"We're happy to see this SecureUDID initiative (after all, OpenUDID needs to be perfected)," Ohayon ends, in a conciliatory manner.

"But we're disappointed to see how this was brought about and promoted and felt compelled to inform those interested of the situation (many, trust us!)."

[Sources: Appsfire / Crashlytics]