Promote Prav App project officially as FSCI
Ravi Dwivedi
Public
Seen by 152
Prav App project is a plan to get a lot of people to invest small amounts to run an interoperable messaging service that is easier to join and discover contacts.
It will be based on Free Software Quicksy app which gives a similar experience to WhatsApp without locking users to its service by interoperability with any XMPP service provider.
People outside the tech circles find plain xmpp complicated and hard to use, but prav will be as convenient as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal.
This service will be offered under a multi state cooperative society in India. Website: https://prav.app
You can also fill the membership form on the prav website and get involved.
Full disclosure: I am a member of prav project.
How is prav project different from other other similar projects?
It is a social project, where we will focus on increase representation from diverse groups society in addition to software freedom/interoperability/privacy.
Quicksy is convenient xmpp app for nontechies, but it is good to have more such services. Already Quicksy does not advertise itself and we plan to scale up and advertise it. More and more such xmpp services setting up and advertising would be a welcome move.
Users will pay directly for the service in the form of a subscription fee, which is calculated to be Rs 200 for 3 years per user if there are 10,000 users. Prav will have full time jobs for running servers etc. In contrast, FSCI services poddery and diasp provide xmpp, and they are supported by voluntary donations, time, effort.
It will be a cooperative society to ensure democratic decision-making. Think of it as your app asking you to vote before finalizing their privacy policy etc. There was a huge backlash regarding privacy policy change of WhatsApp in 2021 January, so such cases won't happen here because many members will have voting rights.
It will promote free software in general, and prav project will donate some part of the profit to free software projects it depends on, like Quicksy.
Poll Created Tue 22 Mar 2022 5:43PM
Publish a blog post officially supporting prav project on behalf of FSCI Closed Tue 5 Apr 2022 11:01PM
Let's have a meeting to write that blog post.
Publish a blog post officially on behalf of FSCI. I have already written a blog post here https://ravidwivedi.in/posts/prav-free-software-business/ and we can write a similar post on FSCI website too.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 100.0% | 6 |
|
| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 234 |
|
6 of 240 people have participated (2%)
Ravi Dwivedi
Tue 22 Mar 2022 5:44PM
Let's officially endorse prav app project on FSCI blog.
Pirate Praveen
Tue 22 Mar 2022 6:33PM
It was started by some members from fsci and many are actively shaping its evolution
Pirate Bady
Thu 31 Mar 2022 5:57AM
since prav is planned as a free software based service it will help to bring more people to free software, hopefully
Ravi Dwivedi Sat 9 Apr 2022 2:17PM
The blog post is published here https://fsci.in/blog/prav-app/
Karano Mon 25 Apr 2022 11:55AM
A suggestion for a better Title would be
Prav app: "Take back control of your data! Now you don't need to let Whatsapp sell your data for messaging your friends
Ravi Dwivedi Mon 25 Apr 2022 12:40PM
I think title is fine. It is catchy.
Karano Mon 25 Apr 2022 12:49PM
We are not just challenging monopoly of whatsapp , we are promoting privacy friendly and free alternative. Every other im seems to challenge whatsapp, so It doesn't make it catchy .We need to tell what different does our service make to them over whatsapp.
Ravi Dwivedi Mon 25 Apr 2022 1:11PM
Makes sense. Earlier we were thinking along the lines of privacy or interoperability and so we wanted to market it to WhatsApp users only as a modest goal to begin with.
Now I am thinking that we can emphasize the aspect of prav being controlled by its members and users, and this will challenge all three: WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal.
Ravi Dwivedi · Sat 9 Apr 2022 1:21PM
This is the draft of the blog post
Title: Prav App Project: Challenging the Monopoly of WhatsApp
PravApp project is a plan to get a lot of people to invest small amounts to run an interoperable messaging service that is easier to join and discover contacts.
It will be based on [Quicksy](https://quicksy.im) which gives a similar experience to WhatsApp without locking users to its service by interoperability with any [XMPP](https://xmpp.org) service provider.
The prav project wants to offer this service under a Multi State Cooperative Society in India, and they need 50 members each from at least two Indian states.
In addition to the software freedom and interoperability, the Prav project will give users control over its privacy policy. The cooperative society ensures democratic decision making as the members of the cooperative society will have equal voting power.
[Prav's Mastodon handle](https://venera.social/display/85a863ed-1662-496c-4d90-a1a537464326) summarized it very well:
> Imagine there are two dining mess (where students eat) in your college, one in which the menu is decided by the administration, and the other one in which the menu is decided by the students. The administration mess is under their policies over which students have no control, and the menu along with any other policies can be changed anytime without asking students, whereas every decision in the student mess is taken collectively by students.
> Which one would you prefer as a student?
> Prav project is like the student mess in the above example, where users control the Privacy Policy of the service.
Learn more at [prav.app](https://prav.app).