A couple of weeks ago I finally got down to implementing the JSR-311 Restful web services specification I talked about in a previous blog.  In reading the JSR mail list and looking into HTTP content negotiation, a few questions popped up in regards to the programmatic web.

• Why would a client ever send more than one Accept header?
• Why would a client or server ever produce or consume wildcard content types?  i.e. “text/*” or even “*/*”?

I know in theory that the idea is that an application can dynamically search for resources, on the web and just invoke on them.  But when does any real application not have complete determinism?  When you’re writing a distributed application, you research the services you are going to interact with.  What exact data formats do they product?  What exact formats do they consume?  Otherwise its nearly impossible to implement your application.  Coding isn’t guess work.  You’re not going to invoke a service and hope it gives you back something you understand and vice-versa.  So please, somebody, give me real live use cases for this type of complex content negotiation.

Let me preface by saying I’m an old man. I have never ripped and burned music CDs. I don’t have any music on my iPod (only TV shows and movies). And if you’ve read Why Angry Bill? you know that I don’t listen to music on the radio. So, if this blog is old news to you, then apologies.

Was on Google news today and saw discussion on the band Radiohead’s attempt to give away a free album with fans deciding how much they wanted to pay (if at all). The article said that only 38% of downloaders decided to pay anything and marked it as a failure. I was scratching my head at this. A failure? A disappointment? Are you bleepin crazy? I don’t know what the ratio is now, I’m out of the loop on such discussions, but pre-acquistion, I know JBoss’s percentage of paying users was something like 5%, and they got 38%? IMO, that’s a huge success! If JBoss had had that ratio of paying users we would have gone public in 2004 instead of getting bought-out in 2006. The article then went on to say that the band must average $1.50 per download to break even (they’re currently averaging $6.50 per download, pretty good margin!).

Most of the articles on the subject questioned whether the Radiohead model would work with smaller bands since Radiohead already had a strong brand and a fanbase of millions. I think the business model could parallel the evolution of an open source business model. Really, all it is is establishing a trademark and cross-selling your ‘free’ offering to what value-add you are selling.

In the beginning of an open source business, your main value-add is usually consulting and training. This is business that brings in easy revenue, but that you can’t scale effectively because of the amount of people that is required to drive this. For the music world, maybe a band could cross-sell on-site gigs. Yeah, maybe this is unrealistic to expect a fan to want to book a particular band, so something more creative is needed. Maybe the music download would require the fan to solely enter in their age and zipcode. Then the band could know where they are popular. For instance, if they were very popular in the Greater Boston area, they could call up nightclubs in the area and say “Hey, 100 people downloaded our album in Boston. There’s a good chance we’d be able to fill the place.” As the band gained a small following, this information could be used to drive up their fee.

Another way JBoss bootstrapped themselves was through documentation sales. At the height of this these sales totally funded the salary of Scott Stark, and subsidized the salaries of me, Dain, and Sacha. For a band, it could be as simple as selling a professional PDF of their song lyrics. Would you be willing to pay $1 for a printable PDF of your favorite band’s song lyrics? Then there is of course always band merchandise of t-shirts, mugs, towels, posters, etc. All this stuff is so easy and cheap to set up to sell online. We did it at JBoss.

The last step in the evolution of an pure open source business is selling subscriptions. This is where I’m at a loss of how a music band could push such an offering. There is always the possibility of going un-pure. Radiohead seems to be doing it by cross-selling their $80 dollar deluxe box set. JBoss did much of the same with JBoss ON. I know other open source companies are taking similar tacts.

All and all, it might be hard to break even on the Radiohead “honesty box” model for small startup bands, but there’s a lot of creative different ways I think bands could make money off of free IP. I really think open source business models could be applied to other forms of IP. It will be interesting to see how this evolves in the music industry and kudos to Radiohead for thinking out of the box.

Its funny reading all these articles on, if you had the 1st pick in the draft and Manning and Brady were available, who would you pick? The answer becomes obvious if you think about it. How many times has Manning melted down in playoff games vs. Brady?

Manning:

• 2003 AFC Championship game. 3 Interceptions by Ty Law. Need I say more?
• 2004 AFC Divisional game. 3 points? Even after you got the competition committee to change the rules? You suck Manning.
• 1st half 2006 AFC Champinship game. Asante Samuel picks off Manning for a touchdown. Looked confused the entire half. Yeah, he had a great 2nd half, but how much of that was a patriots defense lacking its 2 starting safeties and a team that had the flu going around?

Brady:

• 2005 AFC Divisional against Denver. One loss for a team that didn’t have the talent to do a 3-peat.

Everybody always wondered: what if Brady had the same receivers Manning did? Now we know. Considering only one receiver from 2006 is active from the Pats, Jabar Gaffney, and is a 4th stringer, also considering the Pats #1 receiver has been active on the Redskins a total of 1 game all year, just shows you how good Brady is. and how much better he makes everybody else around him is just astounding.

Then there are the off-the-field intangibles. Manning is in a million commercials. Brady has done only a few, but even then he has had teammates with him to share the limelight (and I assume, the cash). Manning whines like a baby whenever he makes a mistake in a game. Sometimes even blaiming players other than himself. You won’t see Brady doing that. Finally, who can like somebody that is part of an organization that whines to the competition committee to get the rules changed because you got beat so bad in the AFC Championship game?

Really, I can’t wait for tomorrow’s Colts-Pats match up. Good vs. Evil as some people in the media would like to portray it. Hopefully I won’t have to eat any crow over this email.

Edited after game:  See?  Now Peyton knows how it feels to have no receivers and lose by 4 points in a playoff-like game to a team you should have beaten.