Palm has suspended admission to its Early Access Program for developers after a tipster leaked a bit of code from the recently-released webOS 2.0 SDK that clearly mentions a never-announced virtual keyboard. According to pre|central, someone with access to the SDK revealed a section in a configuration file titled (Virtual Keyboard), containing a single entry: “VirtualKeyboardEnabled=false.”

Now obviously this line alone does not guarantee Pre and Pixi owners a future of landscape-oriented typing, but the swift, no-nonsense response from Palm — combined with confirmation from HP that a webOS tablet-in-need-of-keyboard is coming early next year — is highly suggestive that a soft input panel is in the works. After all, Palm can’t really expect to just license Grafitti back from Access and call it a day.

Of course the bad news here is that fewer developers will be granted early access to software development kits until Palm decides to re-open the application process, likely with more onerous terms. At this point it would seem that Palm needs all the manpower it can muster to keep pumping applications into its market, so perhaps that a lighter touch might be the best approach in this situation.

(via: intomobile, pre|central, and Twitter (1),(2))