I need to control the distribution of the firmware flash files, so that basically 1. customers don't see anything they don't need or didn't pay for and 2. so I can pull or update a firmware flash file if I need to and easily expose the release notes/make old versions available. It would also be nice to see which customers have downloaded which files and allow them to subscribe for email notification of updates or something like that.
Is there some software out there that does this that I can install on-prem? My budget is max $2000 preferably one-time cost and it's unlikely that having any intellectual property hosted externally will be allowed. I can only seem to find JFrog, but there must be heaps of these out there.. surely.
UX and usability is absolutely valid, and you might consider having a customer account system with which customers can identify the hardware they have (automatically if they buy it through you) and see the corresponding firmware they need. But that's a user experience question, not a licensing matter.