Even though I also like Zotero better because of its open nature, I prefer Mendeley in practice mostly because it has a decent Android client where you can just sync all your PDFs and read them on a tablet or something. Seemed a bit more involved to do the same with Zotero (where it seemed there were only minimal Android clients quickly hacked together). Mendeley also has 2GB storage, so that's nice for personal use and paper/book syncing.
That said, if I had to collaborate in a larger group I'd surely choose Zotero instead of locking everybody into some proprietary ecosystem.
But for personal use I definitely don't feel that I'm enabling or supporting Elsevier somehow in using their freeware.
> I definitely don't feel that I'm enabling or
> supporting Elsevier somehow in using their freeware.
If instead of using Elsevier's freeware you were to file bug reports - not code just reports - on Zotero then you could be helping improve the software.
And when you suddenly _do_ need to collaborate you'll find that you are using the same tool you have gotten used to, instead of the dissonance of using a tool that is similar-but-not-quite what you know.
I've not got any experience with Zotero, but I do with Mendeley. Unfortunately, the apps you've linked above suffer the same issues as many OSS alternatives to commercial software. For a start, the reviews on the Mendeley client [0] are far better than any of the three alternatives you've provided. All three of them have the same complaints - Functionality/UI leave a lot to be desired. My experience of this fragmentation (KeePass) is you have N clients which offer slightly different features, but none of them offer the same features that the commercial offering offers, meaning people who rely on one or more of the specific features of the commercial offering will never switch.
I have found syncing the PDFs via Dropbox works fine. Zotero puts them in a Dropbox folder with a reasonable filename, and then the regular embedded Dropbox PDF reader does an OK job on my phone/tablet.
It'd be nice to have the database synced, though. Funny how "synchronization of replicas of information", for all its centrality to modern internet-based life, isn't something that our operating systems provide as a system service.
> Funny how "synchronization of replicas of information", for all its centrality to modern internet-based life, isn't something that our operating systems provide as a system service.
Just FYI on that front, macOS has iCloud, which does this. I put something on my Desktop, it appears on all my machines. I can access it from my phone, etc. etc. - it's basically a built-in Dropbox.
That's great for synchronising files. It's not really the kind of thing that would help with synchronisation of, say, contact databases, email folders, shared text documents, calendars, bibliographies, photo archives, etc etc. It'd be interesting to consider an OS-wide API for flexible data synchronisation and conflict resolution.
That said, if I had to collaborate in a larger group I'd surely choose Zotero instead of locking everybody into some proprietary ecosystem. But for personal use I definitely don't feel that I'm enabling or supporting Elsevier somehow in using their freeware.