Promote Prav App project officially as FSCI

Ravi Dwivedi Public Seen by 150

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.

Ravi Dwivedi Mon 25 Apr 2022 1:12PM

I am also thinking that why only take control of the data when users have service in control collectively.

Prav App project: A messaging service controlled by users

Ravi Dwivedi Mon 25 Apr 2022 12:41PM

I think the first line can be "Prav is a collaborative project to build and operate a messaging service that is owned and controlled by a community of its users."

Poll Created Thu 18 Jan 2024 1:15PM

Promote Prav iOS App crowd funding campaign with a blog post Closed Thu 25 Jan 2024 1:00PM

Outcome

by Pirate Praveen Tue 6 Feb 2024 11:01AM

We can publish a blog post on prav ios app fund raiser

What is the decision you need to make?

Prav App is raising funds to build Prav iOS app. https://opencollective.com/prav-ios

Why is this important?

Being Free Software activists this may seem counter intuitive to many as Apple is the exact opposite of what we want, but mass adoption of decentralized messaging platforms depend on our contacts being able to use them to talk to us (even if the number is small, this disproportionately affects us because many groups could not be migrated without easy XMPP on-boarding on iOS).