Everything you wanted to know about Symbian Signed...

[stichbury]

...well, OK, not quite. But for those that don't regularly visit the Symbian Developer Network site, there's a new paper published this week.

It's the first in a series of papers about the Symbian OS idioms that developers love to hate, and Symbian Signed must be one of the hottest topics. Written by Ben Morris, author of the Symbian OS Architecture Sourcebook, it's an overview of the why, and the how. You can find it here:

http://developer.symbian.com/main/do...ian_Signed.pdf

[antonypr]

I understand that the goal of Symbian Signed is good for everyone.

The problem is the overhead in the process of getting Symbian Signed. I don't mention again why developers, especially small and independent developers, really hate it.

I am tired complaining about Symbian Signed process already.

(...From a frustrated independent developers who have submitted an open source application to Symbian Signed 3.5 months ago, but still got no response, Antony)

[stichbury]

I hear you.

The paper addresses why Symbian Signed is in place which, of course, you know. However, some still seem to think it's a scam on Symbian's part to make money out of 3rd party developers. The paper presents a rational and reasoned description of why it's there. It doesn't address some of the recent operational difficulties and cannot comment on individual cases like yours.

It's disappointing that you've been waiting so long though.

[antonypr]

Sure, I understand that. I am happy to see that the platform is still secure after almost 2 years in the market. At least, I haven't heard bad virus, trojan, etc. for Symbian OS 9 (which is very good news).

What I don't like is the fact that Symbian is trying to kill small and independent developers.

Antony

[petrib]

I don't think Symbian is specifically "trying to kill small and indepdendent developers", even if it might feel that way as a small and independent developer due to the relatively high cost of Symbian Signing as it stands today.

In any case, the current model clearly isn't working for everyone, and many are suffering because of it, so some improvements/changes are [desperately?] required, and I do hope Symbian is going to address those concerns. So, keep the pressure on Symbian.