I am developing a cross-platform Java app for OS X, Windows, and Linux. It runs fine on Linux (currently packaged into a .sh file), but now I'm wondering how to distribute it after payment and update it when I make changes.I'm aware that FOSS is typically distributed in a .rpm and .deb package, which provides a convenient way to update the app as well (in Linux mint, for instance, there is a unified software updater that makes use of these). But I don't know if these would be appropriate for paid software that I don't want users to install without paying for.I know that paid software on Linux is somewhat rare, but It certainly does exist. So how is paid software typically distributed and updated on Linux?
How is paid software distributed and updated in Linux?
software installation;upgrade
We distribute our commercial software as .deb packages with our own Debian repository server. You can create and maintain the repository with the standard reprepro tool and you can then configure the web server that hosts the repository to require authentication for the *.deb packages. On the customer side, the credentials are supplied in the sources.list file:cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/your-company-name.listdeb http://customer-name:password@your-update-server.com/debian/ stable main non-freeGetting the web server properly configured so that it reads from a database which customer may download which package may require some work and Debian is not necessarily designed for this kind of thing, but it works extremely well for us (we're using this configuration since 2008).