Symbian Signed Evolution
Symbian Signed has been in turmoil for the last few months. The main problem has been the use of developer certificates by large numbers of general users to sign software that would normally go through the Symbian Signed (3rd) party testing process via one developer - a trend I commented in March. Well, the trend became an avalanche to the point that the Symbian Signed web site couldn’t cope. The site, particularly new developer signups, was out of operation for a few weeks while Symbian tried to upgrade the website to cope and implement some kind of workaround.
The site hardware has now been upgraded and a mechanism has been added to limit the number of signups per domain name. Meanwhile, there are plans to change Symbian Signed to allow end user signing and also ease the burden of signing by developers such as myself.
Currently the signing options are…
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Unsigned - for application with limited capabilities (UIQ only)
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Self signed - same as unsigned except can identify developer (UIQ or S60)
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Developer Certificate Signed (Many IMEIs - Offline) - Extra capabilities allowed for testing purposes only (this requires a Publisher ID)
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Developer Certificate Signed (One IMEI - Offline) - Extra capabilities allowed for testing purposes only (this is what is currently being abused)
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Symbian Signed - Extra capabilities via 3rd party testing
The proposed new options will be…
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Unsigned - for application with limited capabilities (UIQ only)
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Self signed - same as unsigned except can identify developer (UIQ or S60)
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Developer Certificate Signed (Many IMEIs - Offline) - Extra capabilities allowed for testing purposes only (this requires a Publisher ID)
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Developer Certificate Signed (One IMEI - Online, no publisher id, no registration)
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Symbian Express Signed - Extra capabilities without 3rd party testing (this requires a Publisher ID)
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Symbian Signed - Extra capabilities via 3rd party testing with extra tests for stakeholders
The new site for online (single IMEI) developer certificate signing would not only ease the load on the current Symbian Signed site but can also be seen as Symbian conceding to the scenario where users are signing their own applications.
The new Express Signed route would make life much easier for people such as myself and my clients. This option is very similar to Ewan’s (of AllAboutSymbian) ideas that I commented on November last year.
I suspect the ‘extra tests for stakeholders’ part of the new 3rd party testing would be for extra operator or phone OEM testing that they are currently doing themselves. Symbian Signed was originally partly conceived to discourage fragmentation of testing so it’s good to see Symbian trying to bring tests back into a common process.
These plans are for Q4/07. There are lots more details and the opportunity to feed back ideas on the Symbian forums.
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