Comments on: Symbian digging its own grave with symbiansigned.com

By: Ruturaj

Ruturaj — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:43:13 +0000

Symbian, has limited developers by introducing CAPABILITY word. Licensing should be only required for the production release or distribution of application. Lots of SDKs are undocumented and are given when paid for support. Tools for development are also in evaluation, eats time like anything in getting things to work. Signing complexities and turn around time does matters.

By: Martin Storsjö

Martin Storsjö — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:04:05 +0000

Another small comment regarding comparison to iPhone development… At the moment, you cannot install any application on iPhones at all unless you have been granted access to their developer program (or unless you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone). The developer program is currently limited to USA only, and even there nobody seems to be granted access. (See these notes: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/14/iphone-developer-rejection-letter-mass-mailing/ and http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/18/iphone-developer-program-rejections-take2/ ) Therefore, the Apple offering is simulator only in practice for the moment being, you can’t really compare them.

By: Mikko Ohtamaa

Mikko Ohtamaa — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:04:45 +0000

Lucas: Also the RTFM attitude hasn’t really helped in the history and I doubt it will help in the future.

By: Mikko Ohtamaa

Mikko Ohtamaa — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:59:17 +0000

Lucas: Saved by the emulator… Your comment has a tone that you haven’t ever gone through the whole developer certificate application process yourself, have you? As I pointed out, everything having 20 pages doc and still doesn’t work is fatally flawed and waining is very justified.

By: John

John — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:54:43 +0000

Wow, what a disaster. I just got a Nokia E51 and I am trying to write some PyS60 code to get at some of the GSM location functions. What a disaster this digital signature business is! I have been at this for three days now just trying to understand the steps that I need to take in order to actually get this on to my phone! Normally, I’d just like to focus on writing the application.

As a business, I cannot believe Symbian will keep operating as it is now, especially when Google’s Andrioid makes it’s apperance in the mainstream.

By: Lucian Tomuta

Lucian Tomuta — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:00:49 +0000

You have some good points, but failing a demo because a missing devcert? I’m sorry but I don’t buy that. I hope your customers did …

I also believe that the guilt for the current Symbian Signed mess has to be split between Symbian & licensees on one side and developers on the other. Waining doesn’t compensate for reading the docs.

By: Mikko Ohtamaa

Mikko Ohtamaa — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:10:26 +0000

Marcus: Thank you for clarification. I fixed some misinformation I had. But you got the point when you say “they are completely unrelated to Symbian Signed.” Symbian Signed shouldn’t be looking things from their internal perspective, but from the perspective of Symbian developer. They do not seem to have whatsoever concept what their “customers”, developers, need.

By: Marcus Groeber

Marcus Groeber — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:35:21 +0000

The reason why self-signed certificates are not mentioned could be that they are completely unrelated to Symbian Signed from Symbian’s perspective:

They are really just “dummy” signatures with virtually no security value, but they are still accepted by all S60 3rd Edition phones to grant the five Basic capabilities (LocalServices, ReadUserData, WriteUserData, NetworkServices, UserEnvironment) – this will already get you quite far, and we are in fact even releasing some of our commercial software with self-signed certificates only, to reduce the overhead for signing.

Perhaps this is something that Symbian should be much clearer about?

By: Mikko Ohtamaa

Mikko Ohtamaa — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:13:35 +0000

Thanks for feedback Markus.

1) Naturally Apple will certificate applications when it’s released, but you don’t need *a developer certificate*.

2) Didn’t the recent “Open Signed” stuff end self-signed certificates? symbiansigned.com front page does not mention publisher idless offline signing.

By: Marcus Groeber

Marcus Groeber — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:43:59 +0000

Some very good points… however, one remark and one question is possibly in order from someone who has done commercial Symbian development for several years no:

– First a genuine question: I haven’t looked deeply into the mechanics of iPhone app publishing, but my impression from recent articles was that you would still need to go through some “accreditation” process with Apple before you could actually release your applications to other people, and that would require a fee as well. This may only apply after you actually have completed your first application, but wouldn’t it have to be factored in as well?
Also, the fact that you have to buy a machine with MacOS X could actually mean some expense for those of us with a PC, so speaking of “zero” cost is a bit misleading.

– It is not entirely true that you *need* a Publisher ID to start developing for Symbian – as long as your application only uses “basic” capabilities (and that includes using the network, making phone calls etc.) you can use a self-signed certificate that you can just generate on your own machine, and install it with just an additional confirmation dialog on any handset, possibly after setting an option to allow unsigned installations.
This is something that perhaps gets lost in many discussions about Symbian – of course some freeware apps (like RotateMe) actually need additional capabilities, but it is not like you couldn’t write games or even networked clients without ever visiting http://www.symbiansigned.com.