Prav Messaging App for iOS

Historically, XMPP support has been lacking in iOS compared to Android. The situation has fortunately improved, with Monal gaining a lot of new features over the past year thanks to work put in by Thilo and other contributors.

Now, the recently launched Quicksy for iOS has greatly improved the onboarding process—a common stumbling block for new XMPP users— by allowing phone-number based signup. Quicksy was originally an Android service, but Daniel Gultsch (creator of Quicksy) recently collaborated with Thilo Molitor (creator of Monal) to make an iOS version of Quicksy. This means iOS users can have the same seamless onboarding process too.

Technically, Prav is a customised version of the Quicksy codebase. Socially, we are complementing Quicksy's mission with a more participative rebuild as Prav: users can participate in deciding priorities for feature development. We take the top priority features, and raise funds to implement those features by hiring developers.

The project will be owned and operate as a cooperative as imagined by The Platform Cooperative (we are currently in the process of finalising bye laws so we can formally register). This means the privacy policy, various policies, and other aspects of project governance will be handled in a democratic manner.

We recognise that, in order for XMPP messaging to become more commonly used, it is not enough to lay the technical foundations but also to actively campaign and run promotions to inform people about the value of open, standards-based messaging platforms. So, in addition to development, we invest effortin talks, flyers, stalls, and other promotional activities as well. We direct users to Prav and Quicksy as easy onboarding steps, but also encourage them to use other XMPP services when they have the ability and inclination.

Prav started out as an Android app (based on the original Android version of Quicksy), but through a poll among Prav contributors, having an iOS app came as one of the top priority features. The original plan for this campaign was to implement phone-number based signup on iOS. However, since that has already been done by Quicksy for iOS after this campaign launched, we are shifting focus to supporting custom usernames, another voted top priority feature.

By default, phone-number based signup takes your phone number as the username, effectively making it public in a lot of places. We plan to let the user optionally choose a different username instead of their phone number, so they can communicate with people without revealing their phone number, but still use that phone number to log in. You can find more details on this in our Android campaign for the same feature.

Besides the custom username feature, we will be doing the basic groundwork to get Prav out on the App Store, basing our work on the current Monal/Quicksy code.

Finally, since this is our first crowdfunding campaign, it serves as a proof of concept for the new model we are trying to implement: decide on priority features based on user feedback and discussions, and raise funds to implement those features.

The funds raised through this campaign will be given to a developer(s) who implements this. Currently Vaidik, who was previously a Google Summer of Code intern for Monal, has agreed to work on this project. We will also need an Apple Developer Account to publish to the App Store; that currently costs 99 USD per year.

We often get this question from Free Software supporters: "Why are you building Prav, a standards-based, open, and Free Software project, for iOS, a proprietary and heavily locked-down platform?"

The short answer is that the community voted for it. But we wouldn't be doing justice if we didn't explain the reason behind many people voting so.

When it comes to using software like LibreOffice or Debian, it is purely a matter of personal choice. However, it is not possible to beat social services like WhatsApp through personal choice alone due to the Network Effect.

Consider a Prav user who convinces everyone in their circle to use Prav, but then finds out that one of those friends has iOS. The presence of just that one iOS user in circles is enough to force people to use some other service that works on iOS as well as Android (usually, this would be something "familiar" like WhatsApp). This is not hypothetical; it has already happened to many of us who tried to on-board people to Quicksy (before they released their iOS version) and to Prav.

Since Quicksy and Prav are interoperable, this is not such a big barrier as it used to be when we started this campaign, but having Prav directly on iOS would make things simpler to explain, as well as have better integration for things like contact autodiscovery through phone number (another feature people coming from today's proprietary messaging apps are used to).

If you are unable to make a payment via this page, or prefer payment via Indian debit cards or UPI, then you can donate through Razorpay from this page: https://prav.app/donate/prav-ios/

Note: The above description has been rewritten due to many new developments that have taken place since the campaign first launched! For posterity, we have preserved a copy of our old "About" page as well.