Google Finally Coughs Up the Kit

After issuing a two-line reply in response to a petition signed by more than two hundred Android developers, Google has finally gotten around to releasing the Software Development Kits it hid from programmers for months.

The SDK — which an email slip last month revealed had been provided to contestants in Google's Android Developer Challenge under a non-disclosure agreement — was released with an accompanying time-line for future releases, noting that further revisions could be released in September, while the final version of Android 1.0 is planned for later this year, with a release of the project's source code to follow. The blog post announcing the release made no mention of the developer petition or last month's email-spawned uproar, saying only "If you're one of the many developers who were waiting for something a bit more mature, this might be a good time to take another look. "