By the way, if you don't know what XMPP is. It is a messaging protocol. You can get started with #Quicksy or #Prav.

@vort3 @ravi more exactly Quicksy fork, so now people can choose between #Quicksy and #Prav. The value addition over conversations is, this bindling of app, client and a directory makes joining #xmpp easy for people who are used to apps that only needs your phone number.

@stefan @bjoern uh in terms of onboarding people there's #Prav and #Quicksy which are just "download it from the store and enter your phone number" which is especially helpful when the other person is far away or doesn't have time/patience to figure things out

Both send people to specific servers, so you can't do the "pick *this* server" thing, but at least they've got one foot into the network. (For self-hosters, #Snikket is kinda similar with closed invites to your own server)

@janvlug The same way, not every user will have to modify #FreeSoftware to benefit from right to modify.

Why should we accept the monopoly of a single organization to make changes on the server ? Especially those of us in the Free Software community who understand Free Software includes the right to modify.

When we can have both a simplified option for masses (#Quicksy and #Prav) AND choices for people who need (Monocles Chat, Snikket, Monal etc), then why give up on choices ? #xmpp

@janvlug We already improved #Quicksy with #Prav for SMS delivery. In countries like Nepal and Brazil, Quicksy SMS was not working. We changed our SMS provider in Prav and Prav SMS works in these countries.

So even if every person can't modify the server, as a collective, we can change the server too. For users this comes as choices. Both Quicksy and Prav are hosted and operated from outside US. So people get a choice of laws applicable to the service as well.

@janvlug #Signal is better than #WhatsApp, but still centralized. The entire world depending on a Single organization is not very sustainable. We have Quicksy and Prav both giving the same convenience of Signal without lock-in. #Quicksy and #Prav users can talk to each other and to any other #XMPP app.

To actually practice the freedom to improve a software, we should be able to self host the server part (not necessarily each person has to self host, but that option can offer real choice).

@iznogoud @xmpp indeed, contact discovery is an identified issue.

There are some answers, such as Snikket from @snikket_im which uses an invitation mechanism, or Quicksy authored by @daniel which uses phone number as other IM platforms.

I have ideas for another decentralized contact discovery mechanism, but lacking time to work on it and specify it right now. @debacle is also interested in working on such specification.

There are also public search mechanisms.

@bshankar I wanted to comment on your blog post https://bshankar.pages.dev/getting-family-on-xmpp/ (saw it on fsci group)

#Quicksy would have been the simpler option for most people. But unfortunately Quicksy is mostly driven by a single person from Germany and mass adoption and publicity seem to be not a priority for them. So we are trying to promote the idea of Quicksy through a cooperative run project called @prav You are welcome to join this effort to take the idea Quicksy to the masses.

Any developers willing to port/adapt/rewrite #ejabberd api component of #Quicksy server to work with #prosody #xmpp server?

Basically we want to create xmpp accounts via a server component after verifying phone number with sms otp.

Currently it is possible to do this on ejabberd, but adding prosody support will make it easy to add phone number verification to prosody as well. Adding phone number verification or an invite to create account will help stop #spam accounts by a huge margin.

@kravemir As @praveen mentioned that #Signal is verifiably end-to-end encrypted due its source code being available. Similar is true for #Prav and #Quicksy. All the messages are end-to-end encrypted by default using the OMEMO protocol.

Moreover, you can learn about OMEMO here https://conversations.im/omemo/. The link contains a security audit of OMEMO by a third party as well.

Finally, I think collective control and transparency are the key as things can always be improved.

@kravemir @ravi Matrix and Signal has more marketing going for them. Matrix is philosophically on same level as #Prav and #Quicksy, but it needs more resources to run. Signal is definitely better than #WhatsApp since it has #FreeSoftware client, so we can verify its end to end encryption don't have any backdoors. But Signal don't give you a choice to move to a different app later without having to convince every other contact. People can easily switch between Prav and Quicksy.