[Distutils] Will Distutils-1.0 be available outside of Python 1.6?

I saw the announcement a few days back about the Distutils CVS tree being merged back into the Python 1.6 CVS tree. I was wondering if the plans for "Distutils-1.0" include:

(1) it being available as a separate package, and, (2) compatibility with Python 1.5.2.

I'm still testing against the Distutils-0.1.3 drop, which of course meets both of the above requirements. But I wasn't sure how to proceed with regards to looking at the more recent snapshot(s) and/or the CVS version of Distutils. I am anticipating that some of my end-users will not immediately upgrade to Python 1.6 when it is released, and I don't want to make that a requirement since the extension code itself (i.e. my stuff) doesn't require Python 1.6.