[tony_cannistra]

> Zotero is open source and developed by an independent, nonprofit organization that has no financial interest in your private information. With Zotero, you always stay in control of your own data.

Refreshing as a cool breeze on a hot summer's day.

[ulnarkressty]

Right up until one tries to set up a self-hosted server (spoiler - you can't, at least not without 'significant effort' - they themselves say that if you ask about it).

[bonsai_spool]

I haven't had an issue doing this with a standard WebDAV server and this has been true since 2007 or so.

[pseudalopex]

Did you sync all data to multiple computers without a Zotero account? Zotero's documentation said WebDAV could sync attachment files. But everything else required a Zotero account.[1]

[1] https://www.zotero.org/support/sync

[hpfr]

Indeed. It seems there are multiple questions in these comments on this subject, so I’ll just copy my reply from the Zotero 7 release here, since I don’t think anything has meaningfully changed since then:

WebDAV support is nice to save money, but from a privacy perspective it’s a huge bummer that the sync servers get all your citation metadata. A better self-hosting story¹ is one path to resolving this. End-to-end encryption² similar to e.g. Firefox Sync is another. Zotero has a security overview³ that shows they clearly care about good practices, but it’s still bothersome to have to trust the server when many other applications have proven E2EE works great even for non-technical users⁴.

Unfortunately from the main Zotero dev’s responses, it seems clear that they have no incentive to implement either and probably never will (look, the same comment from 2½ [now 4!] years ago⁵) without some shift in circumstances (massive increase in funding, new regulatory requirements). Even if a community member implemented the entirety of either solution, dstillman can just (rightly, tbh) claim it will increase their maintenance burden when they are trying to support paying customers.

1: https://github.com/zotero/dataserver/issues/105#issuecomment...

2: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/380780/#Comment...

3: https://www.zotero.org/support/security

4: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data-prote...

5: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774935

[wycx]

I had a very convenient setup using linked files stored in Dropbox that worked very well for 15 years. The Zotero 6 to 7 upgrade completely broke this, and modified the database so that rollback is not possible. There was no warning that this workflow would be completely broken on upgrade.

[hermanzegerman]

Last Time I tried to store the Database in a Cloud Synced Folder there were like 100 warnings to click away that exactly this would happen...

[bonsai_spool]

I think there’s a plugin called Attanger that replicates that workflow

[ajb]

My understanding is that that works for personal use. If you want to use a group library, not so much. Which can be considered fair, as mostly organisations which should be able to help fund zotero are the ones that need group libraries.

[mxuribe]

Is there any documentation for self-hosting that you can share or point to? Um, maybe my brain is not working today...but it sure is hell is not obvious where the instructions are for setting up a self-hosted instance. :-)

[einpoklum]

Is this intentional crippling / obfuscation, or did they just bother to do the necessary work for the server-side software robust enough to run on different HW & SW setups?

[tingletech]

I think it's the latter

[gdevenyi]

Or try to build it yourself.

[bayindirh]

Personally I use Zotero with my own WebDAV server for sync. Works as advertised, without a hitch.

[pseudalopex]

Did you sync all data to multiple computers without a Zotero account? Zotero's documentation said WebDAV could sync attachment files. But everything else required a Zotero account.[1]

[1] https://www.zotero.org/support/sync

[bayindirh]

No you can't. I have both a Zotero account and a WebDAV server. Since bulk of the load is the attachments, doing it this way doesn't bother me, actually.

[jmhammond]

I do both. I have the Zotero account for the library and webdav for the pdf files.

[pseudalopex]

The question was could all data be synced without a Zotero account.

[jmhammond]

My understanding then is the answer is “probably no.”