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Possible to activate third party sync in offline style?

Hello guys, I'm new to siyuan. I began to use it after finding out it contains more features than Joplin. However I noticed one thing though, Siyuan requires an online account to activate the webdav/S3 sync feature. I find it troublesome and unnecessary to connect to your servers even if I'm using services from elsewhere. This is damaging privacy and contradicts with the privacy-first principal we all believe in.

I'm here asking for the possibility to implement more privacy-friendly methods to unlock the third-party sync. I have a few ideas but I want to know if you guys are on it or not.

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    Possible to activate third party sync in offline style?

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    • zxhd86 • • 1 • 1 Comment

      I prefer to call it activation at will after getting credentials online - you just copy the conf folder after activation on any device, and you can activate the account and features on any offline device.

      1 Reply
      If "account" is also activated, then it equals to I logged in my account, right? Sounds interesting,though.
      LibreMeteorite •
    • LibreMeteorite •
      Author

      What I really want is avoid unnecessary connections to protect my privacy. Since we are using third-party sync services in the case, there's no need to talk to SiYuan's servers, let alone SiYuan's official servers are based on non-free services from China. It's okay for SiYuan to use their service, but we must have the right to neglect potential privacy threats. Third-party sync function certainly don't need SiYuan's official server in nature, so there has to be some more-offline ways to enable it.

      What I have in mind is

      Accountless activation via keys:

      The one-time-purchased webDAV/S3 sync plan will enable digital keys activation. Keys are generated by SiYuan official servers and accepted locally, thus no need to continuously verify the key online. The total chances of key generation for each account is limited, but can be retrieved via a "deactivate" button in the app which will call the SiYuan servers to discard the key and restore chances while disabling third-party sync.

      • almost full offline activation
      • reduced key misuse and reselling
      • However, users' maneuverability are limited
      1 Reply
    • zxhd86 •

      Your idea is wonderful, but here are two questions:

      1. how to make sure that the number of activations provided by SiYuan is just within the range of the device you are using?
      2. how to make sure that there is no reselling of activation keys?

      There's another problem that's not a problem:

      1. how to simply implement it?

      The two main issues are inherently antagonistic; everyone doesn't need the same number of devices, but it's safe to assume that there are going to be users who use a lot of devices and users who use a small number of devices at the same time. If a large number of activations are provided by default in order to account for users who need a large number of devices, then users who don't need as many can sell them at little cost. If the number of activations is kept to the number of devices most users have in order to prevent resale, then some users will have to buy activations repeatedly.

      Considering the two issues above and the one that isn't an issue, the developer chose to use the current solution to solve it. It solves the three problems above almost perfectly, except for the complete lack of connection to official servers that you demand. Users can activate on as many devices as they want and it's unlikely that there will be reselling, while it's fairly simple to implement.

      Even if one wanted to offer the ability to not connect to official servers at all, then the best way to do that is not what you're talking about, in fact, adding an option to go completely offline after activation would suffice.

      For a discussion on this take a look at this: Issue #8835 · siyuan-note/siyuan, although the main body is in Chinese it should still be understandable using translation software.

    LibreMeteorite
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