📰 Dev.to · Nico

A founder note on why Keylight exists — the licensing gaps in Paddle, Gumroad, and Lemon Squeezy that pushed me to build a dedicated layer on top of Stripe.

Switching your licensing shouldn't break a single customer. Here's how to migrate license keys into Keylight while every existing key keeps working.

One-time vs subscription licensing for your app — how each affects revenue, support, and trust, and how Keylight models perpetual keys and subscriptions.

A practical comparison of Stripe, Paddle, and Lemon Squeezy for indie app developers — fees, tax, customer ownership, licensing, and which to pick.

How to license a cross-platform app from one Keylight tenant — the same signed-lease format across the Swift, JavaScript, Rust, and Tauri SDKs.

How offline license validation works in Rust with the keylight crate — verify an Ed25519-signed lease locally with no network call.

Tauri vs Electron for a desktop app you plan to sell — the real differences in core language and bundle size, and where license verification belongs.

How to prevent license key sharing without punishing legitimate customers — device activation limits, fingerprinting, and graceful limits.

A Keylight lease is a signed JSON document, not an opaque license string. Here is the field-by-field anatomy and how Ed25519 verification protects it.

How modern license keys work for desktop apps — from old checksum keys to cryptographically signed leases your app can verify offline.

The full path to selling a desktop app directly — macOS, Windows, Linux, native or Tauri/Electron. Distribution, payments, and the licensing layer most people u

An honest comparison of Keygen, Cryptolens, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Gumroad and StoreKit for licensing a paid desktop app — and why I build and ship on Keylight.

A practical walk through cryptographically-signed license leases — how a desktop app verifies a license with no network call, how device binding works, and the

A lot of indie macOS developers eventually ask the same question: “Should I sell through the Mac App...

What if your OpenAPI spec wasn't just documentation, but the actual configuration of your production gateway? Explore how Barbacane eliminates configuration dri