It’s not just the Android SDK that has come under some fire for being prematurely announced; the much-publicised Developer Fund, which held promises of $10m in funding for coders willing to produce apps for the new mobile platform, has itself been delayed after Google’s engineers discovered bugs in the submissions website.  In fact, at the moment that’s no big deal: the final Terms & Conditions paperwork - which will detail such important elements as who holds the IP of submitted applications - are yet to be ready, leaving developers uncertain and cautious as to their long-term involvement in their own software and in Android itself.

“As you probably know, the Android Developer Challenge submission period for the first round is scheduled to run from today, 2 January, through 3 March. Unfortunately final testing revealed some cross-browser bugs in the application we’ll be using to allow you submit your work. We’re fixing those now, and will have the site up and running as soon as we possibly can. At the same time that the submission application becomes available, we’ll also make the final Terms and Conditions of the competition available” Android Developer Challenge blog

“I am looking forward primarily to legal stuff that can be either very favorable to the developer or get us sign away all our precious IP - depends on how the contest terms are phrased. A lot of us in the Android community bet heavy on the new platform and [we] might be very willing - or very reluctant - to play the Challenge, depending on what’s in it for [Google]“ Android developer

The setback highlights again the delicate balance between commercial viability and the open-source ethos.