Open Signed Online starts next Week

I think most of us hardcore Symbian users will have noticed that Symbian Signed was offline for all the ordinary people without a publisher ID.

A real shame, just now when unsigned great applications like “RockNScroll” are being published and people can’t use it because of the nerving signing process.
Signing has been introduced by Symbian to raise security, but the current result is more than disappointing. The basic idea doesn’t seem bad, but signing should at least be possible EVERYTIME.

It’s clear that this is not the case. The current offline state is no exception. Symbian Signed had quite much failures in the past. This keeps not only developers away from developing for Symbian, also newbies are not able to use great 3rd party software.

Although we don’t know anything about Symbian Signed is working at the problems for ordinary users, Symbian Signed has finally announced today an overworked signing service for developers without a publisher ID:

We will commence roll-out the Beta version of Open Signed Online at the beginning of next week.

As demand is currently higher than the PKI signing capacity, you may experience some restrictions on availability. We are in the process of adding new PKI signing hardware to the signing service to increase signing capacity (but this will take several weeks to configure)As outlined below there is a maximum number of requests that we can service each hour which limits the number of users that can request at one time.Open Signed Online Beta will be available next week with the following restrictions:

• • The Open Signed Online process is fully described here
• • During initial stages of the Open Signed Online beta, the service may only be available from 0900-1500 GMT (UK time) Monday-Friday.
• • Until capacity is increased with additional servers, there is a maximum number of requests that can be serviced each hour, if there is excessive demand (which is expected), some users may find Open Signed Online beta is not available.
• • As for any beta, there may be issues that impact the performance and/or functionality of the service. Such problems may result in the service being taken off-line at short notice and/or for extended periods.
• • Note: Open Signed Online does not allow you to sign a SIS that uses a UID from the “Protected Range”, unless the email address you use for Open Signed Online MATCHES the email address of the account which owns/created the UID.
• • If you attempt to sign the same SIS file in rapid succession, the service you receive will proportionally slow down. This is to provide fair access to all.
• • Installation of the signed SIS file will be restricted to a single IMEI (i.e. mobile phone) that you enter and valid for 36 months.
• • SIS files that have been Open Signed will present a notification upon installation that the SIS file is intended for development purposes only.
• • SIS files can be signed for all Platform Security Capabilities except CommDD, MultimediaDD, NetworkControl, DiskAdmin, DRM, AllFiles, TCB.

Let’s hope that the new Open Signed service will win over even more developers for Symbian. And Symbian Signed should work on the signing problems for normal people…

More information: http://www.symbiansigned.com/app/page