fosdem

It has been more then 2 years now. In fact, there is an exact day when the wikifonia idea popped up. It was February the 26th in Brussels. Tom and I were attending FOSDEM 2005. We probably missed the opening but we were just in time for Jimmy Wales' session, the founder of Wikipedia. The wikiwiki concept wasn't new to us, but the overwhelming facts and figures on the fastest growing encyclopedia of all time clearly demonstrated it wasn't just a hype. The next presentation was brought by Richard Stallman, a very inspiring talk about the history of copyright: Copyright vs. Community in the age of Computer Networks (video - 480 MB). So, how did Wikifonia come into this picture?

In order to answer this question, I have to introduce Benoit, another friend and ex fellow student from the university of Gent. Besides the many class projects we did with the three of us (Tom, Benoit and I), we also shared a love for music and technology. After our studies we kept in contact and met weekly - after swimming - enjoying ourselves behind the computer and our instruments. So, when I called Benoit in the railway station on the way back from FOSDEM, we couldn't stop arguing about a wiki for sheet music. Wouldn't it be great if the music community would be able to create sheet music in the website, using an embedded music notation program and without the fear of doing something illegal?