The Future of Symbian

S3D writes "On 18 May 2004, Symbian, owner of the OS for high-end smartphones announced the formal launch of the Symbian Signed initiative for digitally signing and certifying Symbian applications that meet a set of test criteria. Gartner believes that Symbian Signed, in its current form, is a weak certification program oriented largely toward the needs of application publishers and network operators and may be inconvinient for developers. "

Comments

For people wondering about freeware developers

[matthew.thompson]

From https://www.symbiansigned.com/Symbian_Signed_White _Paper.pdf

"5.4. Freeware developers and the development process

Symbian Signed recognises the innovation and value of the Freeware developer community and will introduce a Peer Review process which shall enable high quality Freeware applications which successfully pass the review process. Symbian Signed shall introduce this process during H2 2004.

Certification is the means by which such software makes the transition from the developer community to the commercial world. However, there needs to be a means for developers to run applications without signing, both as part of the development process and to permit those with the technical skill to share ideas (e.g. developer groups at universities).

Under normal circumstances this is not a problem as all phones allow installation of unsigned applications (usually with a warning). It is possible, however, in the future that some operators may require that only signed applications can be installed on phones supplied to their networks. In this case, the operators and phone makers will need to take steps to support the developer community.

Generally this is achieved by providing "unlocked phones". Alternatively, there are opportunities in principle to integrate capabilities into the development tools (IDEs) that allow developers to install unsigned applications directly from the development tools. The choice of the most appropriate mechanism is an issue for the operators/phone makers.

This will allow the developer community to develop applications even on phones that may normally restrict the installation of unsigned apps."