Free devcerts

[miohtama]

Looks like symbiansigned.com folks have it made impossible to develop any native C++ code for Symbian for free. You need publisher id (costs 200$) to get a developer certificate which is needed if you want to do any in-target development. This includes PyS60 extensions.

Since the number of PyS60 developers is small I hope that our company could buy a publisher Id and create devcerts for all PyS60 developers needing them. Heck, I'll pay the 200$ from my own money and live on macaron the upcoming months rather than see some powermongering fools killing the voluntary development and good community.

As long as it's ok with symbiansigned. I need to confirm them if I ever find a working contact address from their non-functional website. Why those people can't hire one usabilty expert just to clean up the mess when they can hire all the lawyers to make life difficult for those who try to push forward their own platform?

Here are is legal bla bla from symbiansigned.com, so it looks like this kind of moves were ok as long as someone keeps tracks of IMEIs:

Developer Certificates for Open Signed Applications

14.1. Symbian may from time to time make available Developer Certificates." Such Developer Certificates shall be available in accordance with such processes, and subject to such restrictions and conditions, as Symbian may specify from time to time.

14.2. Developer Certificates may be made subject to restrictions including, by way of example and without limitation, a limited validity period, a limited number of device IMEI numbers upon which Open Signed Applications signed with the Developer Certificate will operate, and a limited set of Capabilities which can be accessed by Open Signed Applications signed with the Developer Certificate." You will comply with any such restrictions and you shall not use or attempt to use the Developer Certificate in any way outside of such restrictions.

14.3. You shall only use Developer Certificates and Open Signed Applications for development, evaluation and testing purposes." In particular, but without limitations, you shall not commercially distribute Open Signed Applications.

14.4. You shall only use Developer Certificates:

14.4.1. which you have obtained yourself in accordance with this Agreement, or have been provided to you by a third party and only to the extent that third party has expressly permitted you to use such Developer Certificate;

14.4.2. to only sign your Applications or Applications belonging to third parties, only to the extent that such third parties have provided express informed consent to sign their Application using your Developer Certificate.

14.4.3. to create Open Signed Applications for use on your devices and devices belonging to third parties only to the extent that such third parties have provided express informed consent for you to install and operate such Open Signed Applications on their devices.

14.5. You accept full responsibility for all use by or on behalf of you of any Developer Certificate and any Open Signed Application.

14.6. You acknowledge and agree that Symbian has no responsibility or liability to you arising out of or in connection with any use by or on behalf of you of any Developer Certificate.

14.7. Without prejudice to Section 16, you will not use any Developer Certificate or Open Signed Application for any abusive or malicious purpose, including without limitation to cause any harm, damage, adverse interruption or inconvenience to Symbian or any third party.

14.8. You shall not represent that any Open Signed Application is an Express Signed Application or Certified Signed Application."

14.9. You shall maintain reliable written or electronic records of all use of a Developer Certificate by you, and of all Open Signed Applications signed by you." You shall ensure only trustworthy individuals are authorised to use your Developer Certificate to digitally sign Applications.

14.10. You shall notify Symbian immediately of any unauthorised access to and or use of your Developer Certificates, and you shall co-operate with Symbian and its partners to investigate any suspected misuse or abuse of and Developer Certificate, or the creation of any malicious Open Signed Application.

[miohtama]

Ops.

s/macaron/macaroni

Macaron looks pretty expensive.

[bogdan.galiceanu]

Well, if you could buy us some devcerts, we'd be eternally grateful. And yes, Symbiansigned have made an ugly mess of things with their website, but especially with the signing process. It's gotten to the point where I don't understand it anymore and have to check for news on "How to sign a sis file" every 2 weeks or so.

[croozeus]

Atleast it should have allowed to create dev certs without a publisher id. A publisher id is expensive an will repel the developers
There should be some solution to this in some time as I hope (positively)


EDIT: How many dev certs can be generated using one publisher id?

Best Regards
Croozeus

[bogdan.galiceanu]

Looks like "Open Signed Online" is now available. I haven't tried it yet, but according to them you don't need a publisher ID
https://www.symbiansigned.com/app/pa...ignedOnline.do

[miohtama]

Looks like "Open Signed Online" is now available. I haven't tried it yet, but according to them you don't need a publisher ID
https://www.symbiansigned.com/app/pa...ignedOnline.do

But to sign the application you must upload it symbiansigned.com servers and wait few hours. Try integrate that to your makefile toolchain when you do in-target debugging...

I contacted symbiansigned.com and looks like the reason for developer certification problems where caused by the fact that symbiansigned.com CAPTCHA was cracked and the service was flooded with a bot attack. They probably do have plans to continue to give out free developer certificates as far as I know. But based on how they have been handling things far, I wouldn't bet my penny on to see problems getting fixed in the near future.

http://developer.symbian.com/forum/ann.jspa?annID=36

[bergerc]

Hi,

Symbian seems to take a very dangerous way. Now Apple releases it's SDK and with a not so expensive certificate you may be able to sign and distribute applications you build...

I think Symbian can start counting its days until no more developpers try to use it's complex security system. I can't think of using this ugly webinterface to sign all my modules, I loose too much time.

Hope some Nokia/Symbian people will hear us and try to help developpers... developpers are the one who make the attractivity of the platform, a smartphone without applications is not interesting.