
Show HN: Keygen Dist – dead-simple software distribution and auto-update service - ezekg
https://keygen.sh/distribution/
======
ezekg
Hey HN! I'm the founder of Keygen. I just recently launched Keygen Dist, a
software distribution API, to go along with Keygen's flagship software
licensing API that I posted awhile back whenever I launched [0]. Dist is
compatible with auto-update frameworks such as Squirrel.Mac, Squirrel.Windows,
and works great for WordPress plugin and theme updates, distributing a paid
Node package, a paid Rubygem, Composer package, etc.

Open to answer any questions you all have and would love to chat if anybody is
interested in the service. I have a few coupon codes waiting too. :)

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538351)

~~~
heroprotagonist
Questions..

Is this a white-label service, in that any URLs used within product can point
to our own domains?

Regarding product lock-in:

1) Are future pricing changes tied to specific already-released versions of
products?

Example: Customer installs version 1.5 of software. Licenses are validated
every week or two. Service pricing changes, vendor comes up with some other
solution but it takes 3-6 months for customers to move from 1.5 to the new 1.6
version of product without Keygen in it. Does the software vendor then have a
choice between breaking license checks for existing installed customers or
paying the arbitrary rate increase until they can get all customers updated?

2) Assuming vendor can whitelabel and provide their own URLs (maintaining
control of them), if a transition off of Keygen is necessary, would you have
any issue with your former customers (vendors) using an API mock that provides
identical response to avoid breaking their own existing customer installs?

Example: whitelabel license check API goes to vendor website, who passes
through to Keygen and returns response back to software. Vendor stops using
Keygen, replaces the pass-through to provide an API mock. Existing software
license checks continue to validate without requiring a software update to
prevent the license check from failing.

~~~
ezekg
Thanks for the questions! So I'm currently working on making both the
licensing and distribution APIs support whitelabeling via a CNAME DNS record,
but at the moment, no, it's not supported. You can set up a proxy server in
front of either API with your own domain (similar to how you would integrate
e.g. AWS S3 behind your own domain using their API), but that's about it for
now.

And for your other questions:

1) I'm not sure I'm understanding you 100%, sorry. But it seems like you're
asking about pricing changes for Keygen itself? I don't plan on hiking up
prices on customers without due notice (even then, all past pricing changes
have grandfathered in current customers' plans), and if they decided to part
ways with Keygen because of a pricing change (e.g., maybe their volume doubled
and I ask them to upgrade to a larger plan to support the additional traffic)
I'd be more than happy to help them with a transition plan so that their
customers don't suffer, but that would of course be on a case-by-case basis.
Is that what you meant?

2) No, I don't think I would have an issue with a vendor mocking my API
endpoints to make sure their software continues to function. Better yet, they
could purchase an on-premise install and run the APIs themselves via Docker,
and even purchase an additional license to modify the on-premise server's code
to meet their needs.

Vendor lock-in sucks, so thanks for asking these questions. I'd be happy to
hear suggestions you may have on how I could better deal with the vendor lock-
in fears a lot of companies seem to have when integrating third-party APIs
(understandably so).

~~~
heroprotagonist
Thanks. For 1, yes, it was mainly about pricing changes. Once you're embedded
in software it's pretty much a commitment for the lifetime of that version of
the product, at least. If upgrade cycle is, say, 6 months, then month-by-month
pricing has potential to turn into a hostage situation. EG, plan can change
from $200 to $2000 per month and vendors are forced to either accept it until
their customers upgrade, break installs, or come up with some other solution.

But, I think from the other responses, this is an avoidable scenario. Thanks
for the information.

