Yes that's 1/2 a year.
Having no block reward for 1/2 a year seems very odd. There really won't be any incentive to run the wallet and mine. Transaction fees won't be enough, just look at what a disaster NXT was (despite having awesome developers and software).
What is the reasoning behind the no block reward decision?
When and how is the next round of distribution happening?
Basically there will be no block rewards while the dev keeps 10M SEM .....

As described on the OP, the first 500,000 blocks is used for community distribution and RC test. The founder only owns 2.5M in the 1st year and the community own 10M.
Many validators have already earned 10k-100K from the alpha and beta test block rewards. It would be more fair for everyone to start minting when the community distribution is complete.
The next round of distribution is BTC airdrop; details will be announced when the RC net gets stable.I understand your reasoning about fair distribution and such, but 6 months of empty blocks? This is like ages in crypto!
People had two month already to participate in the project. To become a validator one has to have a dedicated 24/7 server, running which just for the sake of a fair distribution doesn't make much sense... 700 bct accounts were getting much more for free than validators that were securing the network all that time.
Now again some random people will be getting tons of SEM for free, while others (delegates) will be forging blocks for them? 6 months of empty blocks and then 20k SEM per year at most for one validator sounds too wrong for me, sorry...