Mobile Development barrier to entry.

Question

I'm looking at making some mobile apps in my spare time and I want to be able to put them up online for anyone to use (and probably open-source). I've worked with PyS60 a while ago and I really liked it.

My problem is, I don't want to spend any money on these apps (I'm not planning on making money from them in any way) and for me to properly distribute PyS60 apps it looks like I need to buy an expensive publisher license, then still pay every time I want an app signed. I know I can just distribute the scripts, but that entails the end user to download the pys60 interpreter...

I'd be happy to look at other languages / platforms too. IPhone apps need a dev license and I would need a Mac to compile the code (Which I don't have, I'm a linux x86 user).

J2ME apps seem to need to be "Java Verified" in order to be in OVI store. I presume not though if they are distributed by other means?

Basically I am looking to write apps that will work on my phone (N95) and if someone else sees it, I can say just get it from www.example.com/myapp and it will just work. I would also be interested in using things like the OVI store as a way of distributing it. But I don't want to be spending loads of money.

Anyone have any experience or knowledge on this matter? Is J2ME my only option?

Answer 1

The use of J2ME will also require you to pay for application signing fees if your application is using 'protected' APIs (for example using networking). Another drawback of J2ME is that the consumer handsets support different sets of certificates depending on the operator's security policies.See this article for more details.

I recommend sticking with PyS60 for your needs. It is a great development tool, but you will need to swallow the certification costs for distribution.

Answer 2

It's likely that you can install unsigned SIS files too. Check App Manager settings that the Software Installation setting is "All" and not "Signed only".

To get signed SIS files, there's Open Signed Online which allows you to get your SIS files signed for free, though with IMEI and some irrelevant platform security capability restrictions. If you stick with the test UID range and do not plan to have a wide audience, you can point your users there.

The PyS60 runtime installation files are already signed and are best delivered separately in any case.