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Ask HN: How do you deal with software licensing?

4 points by eyegor ↗ HN
This is sort of related to DRM. Basically, an application I'm working on needs to have a licensing scheme. Generate keys for users, validate keys client side, revoke keys if needed (so obviously it would need a server component, the generation can't be done client side). I can't seem to find any product that already accomplishes this that isn't also trying to be a SaaS. For reasons I won't go into it needs to be self hosted. I'm trying to avoid handrolling a licensing scheme at all costs. Anyone aware of a "standard" product or open source project that could fulfill these requirements? What tools do you lean on to deal with software licensing?

4 comments

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alain_gilbert
I made a software that has been in prod for more than a year now (handling licenses for more than 400 customers monthly). The software is self-hosted by the users, and they need a valid license from my website to run it.

I made all the tools to generate and manage licenses for this app.

I wanted to extract the license management part out of this project, and create a new separate product out of it.

My goal was to create exactly what you are looking for: a self-hosting license management tool for personal projects...

I would be willing to talk more about it with you if you are interested.

Feel free to email me, (my email is in my profile)

eyegor
Thanks but since it isn't already a product, I doubt management would want to touch it unless it was also open source. Otherwise future maintainability is essentially nil. Chances are high that whatever is chosen now will be used for at least 5-10 years, which is part of why I was trying to avoid handrolling something. I likely won't be around by the time an issue comes up and I'd rather not consult on something I slapped together 5-10 years ago.
eyegor
On a side note if you are looking to open source it I might contribute to it in my free time. I've found a few possible products^ since I made this post and they seem to be actively maintained so I hope that I can avoid spending much billable time on this. But the barren landscape makes me feel like there have to be other devs/companies struggling with this problem so I think as an open source project it could gather steam.

^The most promising ones I've seen are pelock and intellilock (not endorsements, haven't evaluated either one yet).

alain_gilbert
Got it. I though it was for a personal project. I understand a company might feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, I found: https://cryptlex.com yesterday while searching for other options. That looks interesting.