Upgrade StorageShutdown of sync for Zotero 4?
By reading some forums and github discussions here and there, it seems that there is a plan to disable the sync server for zotero 4 clients when 5.1 will be released.
However, there is virtually no clear page documenting or even discussing this decision (or I couldn't find it, if there's one, I'm happy if you point me to it).
Any idea on which kind of timeline we are looking at? (weeks, months, years?)
Such a big disruption should be communicated well in advance, at least 3 to 6 months in my opinion, and prominently (blog post, email to registered users).
Maybe it is assumed that by the time we get around 5.1, most of the users will have switched already to 5.0, but there still may be a significant number of users that are still on the previous version, especially since the major changes in Zotero 5 meant that some major plugins needed time to be compatible again (for example BetterBibTeX which is compatible again since only very recently.) and forced us to delay upgrading.
Side question: do you have statistics on the sync server side about the versions of the clients and their relative share?
However, there is virtually no clear page documenting or even discussing this decision (or I couldn't find it, if there's one, I'm happy if you point me to it).
Any idea on which kind of timeline we are looking at? (weeks, months, years?)
Such a big disruption should be communicated well in advance, at least 3 to 6 months in my opinion, and prominently (blog post, email to registered users).
Maybe it is assumed that by the time we get around 5.1, most of the users will have switched already to 5.0, but there still may be a significant number of users that are still on the previous version, especially since the major changes in Zotero 5 meant that some major plugins needed time to be compatible again (for example BetterBibTeX which is compatible again since only very recently.) and forced us to delay upgrading.
Side question: do you have statistics on the sync server side about the versions of the clients and their relative share?
Zotero has always only guaranteed full functionality for up-to-date versions, so in that sense this is really not all that different.
Moreover it is answered in the question named "How much longer can I use Zotero 4.0 for Firefox?", but as a user of Zotero Standalone for already long time, I didn't really feel concerned by the question, and is probably the reason why I missed the note.
> Zotero has always only guaranteed full functionality for up-to-date versions
I wasn't aware of this fact either. I agree that it's quite evident that only the latest versions are supported for bugfix and other improvements, but since the syncing is a "core" functionality, which had been working for many versions, breaking this functionality for older versions warrants IMHO a fair warning to users. (as already mentioned, upgrading to Zotero 5 was not hassle-free for a lot of users, and may have had to be delayed for the aforementioned reasons)
May I suggest to announce the fact that all Zotero 4 clients' syncing will cease to work soon* in a more visible way? (dedicated blog post at least, email to registered users maybe).
Since it is already known to happen, there is no reason to wait for announcing it, this will give more time for everyone to make sure they upgraded.
(*for some definition of soon)
Note that macOS 10.6 has been unsupported by Apple since February 2014 and received its last security update in 2013, and no major browsers support it anymore, so it's generally unsafe to use connected to the internet. (That also means that using either Zotero 4 for Firefox or the Zotero Connector would require an insecure browser, which you absolutely shouldn't use.)