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Comment by rockmemozart | Hacker News Reader

The only thing holding me back from using Zotero is that, afaik, you need to use a Zotero account to reliably sync metadata between devices (the Zotero Data Server isn't supported). I wish it was easier to self-host; there's no reason for me to interact with their servers.

It's always a disappointment to find otherwise great open source projects that have key components that deny privacy.

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Hint: You can sync the library for free by making an account. You need the "Zotero Storage" only if you want to sync the files as well. However, you can simply sync the folder ~/Zotero/storage using SyncThing. You could also use WebDAV, but SyncThing is just so much easier (set up & forget). The IDs/Metadata is consistent among syncs. :)

Of course, that doesn't resolve the privacy concerns, but personally idc about that.

edit: It seems like you might be able to sync everything by just putting ~/Zotero/ into something like SyncThing, avoiding the Zotero servers. But you'd probably have to be careful only opening the app after syncing has been completed. I haven't tested this though.

If you have a synology nas you can also easily install the webdav server and use that :)

This is completely missing the point of GP. You can't (unless something has changed) sync metadata without using their servers. webdav is for the data, not the metadata. If you don't personally care about privacy, fine, but that's irrelevant here.

Replicating the local Zotero folder across devices won't properly sync the metadata in the face of concurrent changes.

If I didn't care about privacy and freedom I would have just used a proprietary product to begin with. It's an incredibly disappointing situation to have dragged on like this for so many years.

Edit: Looks like nothing has changed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774935

> If I didn't care about privacy and freedom I would have just used a proprietary product to begin with.

You are entirely free to use one of the many proprietary products...

The point is that GPC doesn't want to use something proprietary.

Lol.

Ok, but they’re complaining about an open-source project; they can fork zotero and make it point to their own sync server.

"Just fork it" is dismissive and misses the point. The criticism remains valid even if the maintainers refuse to act on it for whatever reason. Even if I were to invest the time to fork the project, the criticism would _still_ remain valid as long as upstream didn't take steps to fix the problem.

Is Zotero 6 Mac client still supporting WebDAV? Don't find WebDAV option in settings.

I‘m on windows, and here it is still possible. Try checking your settings again, it is a bit hidden: goto settings/sync, then file-sync -> via WebDAV is available in a Dropdown menu.

Zotero supports WebDAV and I was using it with box.com without any troubles for years. What lured me to switch to Zotero's sync and cloud storage in the end, though, is the group library function.

Yes, I wish they supported the server instance. Still, I don't mind subscribing to their syncing because it is probably the project's main source of revenue; although I am not for certain about that.

I sync the data with syncthing, seems to work fine.

Is there a FOSS alternative to Zotero? It seems like the kind of product that could be successfully managed by the bazaar model.

Zotero is the open source [1] alternative, to Elsevier's Mendeley.

[1] https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/source_code

Can you export/import the data to/from devices?

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