2025-09-04, 17:30–18:00 (Europe/Budapest), Auditorium
How to involve the wider community in your free software project's development.
Free (Libre) Software gives users right to modify the software. However, many times, the focus is on features that are more interesting for developers to work on. This unfortunately means that features which are less interesting to develop but still desired by users don't get prioritized enough. For instance, re-writing an existing software in their favorite programming language might be more attractive to a developer than adding a missing feature to an existing software written in a programming language they don't like.
Prav(https://prav.app) is a free software messaging app and service based on the federated XMPP protocol - does the reverse - the community votes on features to be added and then hires developers to implement those features. DEPHCOM is another community geared towards making Debian for mobiles more user-friendly. In DEPHCOM, we fund developers to add features based on user needs.
In this talk, I will share the story of Prav and DEPHCOM - two free software projects where user needs are prioritized in order to add features and drive software development.
Ravi Dwivedi is a free software and privacy activist from India. He is the CEO of the Prav cooperative. He runs mirrors for LibreOffice in India and spreads awareness about LibreOffice in the country.