this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Seeking Advice on Monetizing a Library (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by keavox@alien.top to c/sideproject@indiehackers.space
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Hi

I have an idea for a library that I think has potential for monetization and I'm in need of some advise. My main queries revolve around implementing licensing. Should I develop my own system for generating and validating license keys within the code, or are there existing tools I should consider? Also, I'm looking into a way to cap the number of users, like ensuring only five developers use it within a 5 seat purchase instead of 500. Do I need to create my own API or a simpler method to monitor and manage these user seats?

As a C# developer, my initial implementation will be in this language. However, I aim to make this functionality accessible to other programming stacks too. Is there a feasible way to extend this to languages like Python and Java without completely recoding everything? Perhaps a wrapper around the existing DLL?

Any insights or experiences you can share would be immensely helpful. Thanks.

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[โ€“] snarkofagen@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

This is a legal problem more than a technical problem.

Any protection you implement will allmost certanly be trivial to break or get around.

Just tell people they have to pay to use your library.

[โ€“] snarkofagen@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

As to your second question.

I used (and payed for) a library that used your planned solution.

It was a c# library to to manipulate flash/swf files (~20 years ago) it shipped with python and java wrappers, but those only worked on windows. If you go this route try to build for dotnet on linux too.

Good luck