The birth of Wikifonia

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?

The day after, on a Sunday evening, we came together to think about a good name. Obviously, we started our list of names with wikimusic but that one was already taken. Eventually we came up with wiki and symphony, but the contraction would have become wikiphony and using phony in the name was perhaps not the best idea. The solution was to consider the Ancient Greek word, symphonia. Actually, sym means "with, in company with, together with". By replacing it with wiki, it looks like the true nature of the word symphonia didn't change: sound together, but this time over the internet. As a final touch, we decided to take wikifonia instead of wikiphonia, just because you have one character less to type ;-)

Obviously, the idea of a wiki for sheet music can only become reality when there is some sort of a copyright clearance. Of course, let's not forget the technical challenges as well. But still. Building the legal bridge between the internet community at one side and the artists and right holders at the other side, has proven to be the major challenge. We are still working on the right model which will make both sides happy. But more about this later.