Should Boxee monetize, yearly license fee perhaps? I think so....

**cfranzen05** · July 8th, 2009, 04:21 PM

It just makes sense. Not to spend alot. Lets face it, I use Boxee for content and price. Now if a yearly Boxee license was reasonable, say $50 a year. Why not pay that?

1. It is a great product.
2. With income Boxee can then project cash flow better and actually hire a fleet of programmers to make the product that much better.
3. The support and product will be even more stable over all.
4. They can set support expectations too so they would not have to worry about that.

Now i left cable tv because of cost. But if Boxee does it smart (no stupid monthly fees). A LOW yearly license sounds so much more inviting... Then I think there could be a powerful future.

Anyone agree? Just wondering.

**gene_mingo** · July 8th, 2009, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by cfranzen05

It just makes sense. Not to spend alot. Lets face it, I use Boxee for content and price. Now if a yearly Boxee license was reasonable, say $50 a year. Why not pay that?

1. It is a great product.
2. With income Boxee can then project cash flow better and actually hire a fleet of programmers to make the product that much better.
3. The support and product will be even more stable over all.
4. They can set support expectations too so they would not have to worry about that.

Now i left cable tv because of cost. But if Boxee does it smart (no stupid monthly fees). A LOW yearly license sounds so much more inviting... Then I think there could be a powerful future.

Anyone agree? Just wondering.

no, keep it free, but I am sure if you wanted to donate money the boxee team would not turn you down.

**iBog** · July 8th, 2009, 04:34 PM

One annual fee is just pre-payment of 12 monthly fees.

I like the idea of getting money to Boxee to speed up development of certain features. However, there still needs to be a light/community/free version. Now the question is, what features would be fee based?

Free - Play local media?
Fee - Play Internet content?

**pax85** · July 8th, 2009, 04:44 PM

I'm always for 'free', if possible. I wouldn't even mind some decent ads, if money were a problem for the Boxee team.

**derrick1985** · July 8th, 2009, 04:47 PM

I agree with the idea of donating, but not a subscription fee or more ads. One, there are already too many ads on most of the shows we watch (considering it's on the net mostly) and two, if they start charging us to watch programs through other peoples sites (like CBS) that might cause some grief legally, I would think.

**DPK** · July 8th, 2009, 05:26 PM

It's already been stated that boxee will be a free product for end users. So it's kind of hard to back pedal after the head of the project admitted to that.

I think the income will start coming in when team boxee actually cares about choosing a hardware platform to sell/distribute boxee on.

**rampantoctopus** · July 8th, 2009, 06:28 PM

I'm totally down to buy a boxee set top box when the time comes (hell, I've already bought an AppleTV just for Boxee), I'd also happily donate a little something to assist with development in the meantime, but I think that charging for boxee would open boxee up to all sorts of legal issues.

If boxee were to start charging for access to content, there would be a slew of lawsuits of publishers who want their piece of the action. I'm sure that there would also be plenty of issues with the developers who contributed to the underpinnings of XBMC-- I'm figuring that there is no reasonable way to track down all those developers and compensate them to take their source to market... Charging for use would undoubtedly spell the end for our loved service... If boxee ever wanted to start from scratch and go entirely closed source, get agreements with content providers, I'd be interested in what the product would look like... but in a lot of ways, that product already exists, it's called cable.

I do like the idea of having a way to support boxee in the meantime... maybe you guys should take donations or partner with a usenet source and make a channel for it... Well, that's my 10 cents.

Keep up the good work guys! Let me know when the donate button is installed.

**datago** · July 8th, 2009, 06:50 PM

First off in order to charge for it it would need to be a fully working product. Not well this works if you are on the apple side...& that does if you are linux based etc. Need to get to a full release before even considering that type of thing. Then there is the off and on thing that is going on with hulu - not something I'd be willing to pay for then not be able to use it.

Secondly I feel that many boxee users myself included are seriously considering it because it IS free & open source.

If it were to go fee based I might as well just keep my satellite with DVR. To me the whole point is to get out of paying for a bunch of junk that I don't watch in the first place. Satellite and cable both have umpteen hundreds of channels that out of the I only watch about 5 or 6 total.

Overall what I've seen of boxee I really like it & hope that it continues to grow & improve!!

**Sniperking** · July 8th, 2009, 07:30 PM

Being from the UK apart from a few good programs available from BBC IPlayer,4OD,ITV and Demand 5, there isn't much to watch on-line. So i know for sure that if boxee were able to make a deal with HULU,CBS etc to bring content legally to the UK and remove Geo-Blocking that i would pay for this privilege no problem, as long as it was a reasonable price.