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Project Migration

There are many services that I use that I've been meaning to migrate off of, but for one reason or another I've put off doing so. Today (2023-04-20) I randomly came across this post:

We need to talk about your Github addiction

This provided me with a gentle reminder. Github is probably one of the easier services to get out of. I've even already got a paid sr.ht account that I can use whenever I want. I decided I'm gonna make a page to keep a list of the the services I want to get out of, and also keep track of my progress, the logs of what I've done, and some context in general. I'm calling this (unimaginatively enough) Project Migration.

Here are the things that I might want to do as part of this project:

[-] Github

[ ] Gmail

[-] Google

[-] Google Chrome

[ ] Google Keep

[ ] Google Maps

[ ] Google Authenticator

[ ] Google Podcasts

[ ] Google Drive/Docs

[ ] Youtube

[ ] Amazon

[ ] Cloudflare

[ ] Audible

[-] Twitter

I'll mark the completed ones with an "x" and the ones in-progress with a "-".

Before proceeding with more details though, maybe I should pause and consider why I'd like to do this. As well as why I might not want to do it. So here's a list of my reasons, one or more of each might apply to any of the services I want to move away from:

Non-free software: Using non-free software is never pleasant. It has practical downsides too on many occasions, as non-free software frequently doesn't allow you to do what you want the way you want it.
Consolidation and Anti-competitiveness: Some of the services I want to get out of are not bad per se, quality-wise. But when a single company can control a big part of your life, or society at large, sooner or later they will abuse they're power.
Bad service/Enshittification: Cory Doctorow has coin the term enshittification, and it's a great word for the things many companies have done to their products and services. Quality is never number one priority. When you have the search business of basically the whole word, it doesn't take long to realize the best way to make even more money is by piling up ads over ads, or incentivizing the entire web to churn out copious amounts of useless articles optimized for your ad algorithms.
Social Responsibility: Some services are just bad for society. At least the way they are being operated at the moment. Social media is one of those things. I've mentioned Twitter in particular because that has been the drug of my choice for a long time, but they all have the same sorts of problems: they promote conflict in society and provide an avenue for manipulating the minds of us all. Not to mention just wasting our time.
Fun: Sometimes rolling your own might actually be quite fun!

And here are some reasons why I might _not_ want to do this:

Inconvenience
Cost
Time and Effort
Does it even matter? It's hard not to ask yourself that, but you know, if everyone says that, would anything change?

I'll be populating the rest of this page with stubs and ideas, and try to expand the entries as I make progress, or have new thoughts.

Github

Lock-in mechanism: streak addiction, low-maintenance web hosting, social pressure

Alternative: Sourcehut

I use github for:

Git hosting: This is where are all my source code lives in, as well as all my configuration.
Website hosting: My website is hosted on Github Pages. It's very low-maintenance. Before wanting to host Gemini I didn't need anything to maintain anything to keep the website running. Github did the hosting, and Cloudflare provided CDN. The Cloudflare bit is not even that necessary for my website. After I launched my Gemini capsule, I needed to setup a webserver of my own though, so that I can have both my website and my capsule on the same domain (otherwise I'd have to host the capsule at a separate sub-domain, which I dislike).

The main reason getting out of github for me has always been the activity diagram on the profile page. I'm a sucker for streaks. I just recently allowed my 2325 day Duolingo streak die with great difficulty. Github is the same, only worse. I just like looking at the diagram and see the big clusters of activity.

Also, there's a partial social network effect at play too. Everyone else is on github. You exchange github handles with other developers. It's sorta expected to have a github account. To mitigate this, I'm planning on setting up my profile page to point people to my new home. Maybe also pointing them to this page (or a web version of it) explaining why I've moved.

On the bright side, the more I look at sourcehut the more I like it. The CI system I particularly find interesting. Whenever I've wanted to try Github's version of that, I've found it unreasonably complicated and uninteresting.

Also, sourcehut seems to have it's own alternative to github pages (with gemini hosting as well!) so that's another big plus.

Overall, the process of migrating from github to sourcehut seems to be simple and clear, psychological factors aside.

Progress:

Hodhod was moved to sr.ht
Gemplex was moved to sr.ht
Created initial version of my website using sourcehut pages (for now at elektito.srht.site)
My website is now hosted on my own server, deployed automatically from sr.ht (The sourcehut pages sub-domain will also be kept up-to-date)

Tasks:

[-] Move (important) repos to sr.ht

[x] Move github pages to sr.ht pages

[ ] Add a profile README to github telling people about the move

[x] Update website/capsule links to point to the new repos

Gmail

Lock in mechanism: ease of use, making independent email service really hard under the guise of fighting spam

Alternatives: self-hosting, Migadu, mailbox.org

Google

Lock in mechanism: integration with everything google, being relatively better than everything else

Alternative: Duck Duck Go

I'm already using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine. It's definitely not as good as Google, but it helps in most cases. Occasionally, I manually open Google and search for something. I think that's okay for now, as long as Google is not my default search engine.

Google Chrome

Lock-in mechanism: synchronization, especially password management. Google Translate.

Alternative: Firefox

Two things have kept me from switching away from Chrome recently: Google Translate integration, and synchronization.

I rather need Translate because I still don't know enough Dutch to read everything comfortably without needing help, and Google Translate has been a big help to me these past few years. Fortunately, my Dutch proficiency has slowly improved and I'm not _that_ dependent on Translate. In the cases that I do need help, I've found two extensions that might help:

"Firefox Translations" Add-on

This extension is developed by Mozilla themselvec. It's an offline tool which could be an advantage. Dutch support is in beta, so not sure about the quality. I just tried it quickly on the bol.com website, and it seemed passable. Still, I need to test it more on longer form text.

I've also installed installed the "To Google Translate" extension as a backup for now:

"To Google Translate" Add-on

This could either open Google Translate for the selected text, or open a .translate.goog sub-domain to translate the entire page. Neither is as convenient as having Chrome translate the page in-place, but it might be good enough for me.

It hasn't escaped me that I'm still depending on a Google service here, but it's still a backup, and I'll try keeping its use to a minimum. I'll also be on the lookout for other alternatives.

Another thing that has kept me tied to Chrome is synchronization. I synchronize everything except for tabs. The most important bit though are the passwords. Google's password manager is integrated into Android, so that means I can easily use it on my phone or on my PC, inside the apps or in a browser. It's very convenient. I experimentally tried a hosted Bitwarden system about a year ago. Android integration didn't seem to be as good as Google's unfortunately. Still, it can probably made to work. I need to take another look at it. I might also want to try other hosted services. Firefox itself has its own sync system, but I don't know if it can be integrated into Android to work with apps too. Probably not, but I need to investigate.

There are other smaller things that I've used in Chrome and I'd like to have in Firefox too. Tab groups for example. Firefox does not have native tab groups it seems. I've found the following extension to add tab groups to Firefox:

"Simple Tab Groups" Add-on

It's quite different from how native does this though. I need to see if I like it or not.

My already open tabs and tab groups are another thing that make the move difficult on their own. I'm a big tab addict. I don't close my tabs quite as often as I should! Instead I leave them open for months, and when things start getting really out of hand, I categorize them into groups. I've got quite a lot of them open. Chrome's new "Manage windows" feature says that I have 1437 tabs open on my PC. That can't be right, can it? If that's really correct, I might need professional help!

UPDATE: Turns out, Firefox supports working as Android's password manager. I just set this up, through an option in "Settings > Logins and Passwords > Autofill in other apps". Neat. I need to use it for a while to see how well it works.

Progress Report:

Installed Firefox on all my devices.
Installed "Firefox Translations" and "To Google Translate" add-ons.
Installed "Simple Tab Groups" add-on.
Made Firefox the default browser on my phone
Set Firefox as Android's password manager.

Tasks:

[ ] Come up with a few alternatives for password management.

[ ] Find out if there's a way to have Firefox's password manager as Android's password manager

[ ] Move open tabs to Firefox

[x] Make Firefox default on my phone

[ ] Make Firefox default on my PC

[ ] Start using Firefox for work too.

Google Keep

Lock-in mechanism: Android integration, seamless synchronization

Alternative: org mode with some synchronization mechanism added (plus a mobile app)

Google Maps

Lock-in mechanism: Android integration

Alternative: Open Street Maps

Google Authenticator

Lock-in mechanism: Having Google in the name! :) Generally being annoying to switch off of by nature

Alternative: Authy

Google Podcasts

Lock-in mechanism: Being available by default on Android

Google Drive/Docs

Lock-in mechanism: Integration with Google services, default on Android

Alternative: roll your own?

Youtube

Lock-in mechanism: Having most of the video on the Internet (well, the sort I'm interested in)

Alternative: I already have Nebula, and I also need to take a look at Peertube, but I have a feeling there's no real alternative.

Amazon

Lock-in mechanism: having almost everything with (usually) quick and free/cheap delivery, kindle and kindle store

Alternative: buy local, bol.com, coolblue.nl

Cloudflare

Lock-in mechanism: not much, except having a big name

Alternative: there are a few, but are they any better? maybe going with one of the smaller ones?

Audible

Lock-in mechanism: having most of the world's audiobooks (in English at least)

Alternative: not a real one, but there are some other audiobook apps like libro.fm

Twitter

Lock-in mechanism: having everyone else in there

Alternative: Mastodon

I already have a Mastodon account which I check more frequently than Twitter. I don't think there's any need to delete the Twitter accounts.

Tasks:

[x] Use Mastodon when you have an urge to scroll. Mastodon doesn't provide infinite scrolling of course, so going there will not waste much time!

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