Is the intrusive QR code documented anywhere?

[John Wiersba]

When I browser in Firefox for video downloaders, I find the main add-on page for VDH.  But nowhere on that page does it mention that you *modify* the downloaded videos by adding a QR code unless your add-on is paid for.  It is certainly your right to do this kind of video stream manipulation, but it should be clearly documented so that users choosing an add-on can decide whether or not that want "feature" or not.

Where is it documented?  I have not been able to find it.

When was it added (to which revision)?  Is it possible to "pin" a previous revision to avoid this intrusive feature?

[mig]

This feature has been introduced in November 2008, almost 10 years ago. I don't think you want to pin the VDH version at that time :) Plus, there has never been a watermark-less version that were able to download the cases where the watermark is now added.

The watermark situation is clearly explained in the add-on and this is the reason why we can keep actively developing and maintaining the add-on after 12 years, where most others have disappeared or are trading their users private data in order to get the necessary funding.

[John Wiersba]

1. Just this morning, for the first time ever I was taken to a web page which pointed out the watermark, so something must have changed recently.
2. Where is this watermark situation explained in the add-on documentation?  I can't find it.
3. I'm all on-board with different techniques for getting funding!  But I was very much surprised to see the new web page pointing out the watermark.
   

[mig]

1. do you mean the update page, the one stating the add-on has been updated ? this hasn't changed in years.

2. the documentation for VDH 7 is still a work in progress. VDH 6 documentation has been taken offline because it caused to much confusion. But you get the information directly in the add-on and the commercial nature of the conversion and aggregation features is in the description of the the add-on on addons.mozilla.org

3. again those things haven't changed a lot in many years.

[John Wiersba]

1. I believe what I did was: I saw the page which automatically pops up when the extension auto-updates; I can't find that page again though.  Somehow I saw a different page which I can also no longer find, which describes that downloaded videos will have a watermark QR code.  That page had a "Do not show this page again" type of check box, a picture of a QR code in a video image and I believe a link to a donation page.  I have never seen that page before and I can't figure out how to get it back.  Then I started exploring this issue.
2. The only place in the documentation on https://www.downloadhelper.net where I see mention of the QR code is in the Premium tab.  What I would like to see is a mention of the QR code in the main Add-On page or on a different page on downloadhelper.net, say in a tab that compares the differences between the unpaid-license and the paid-license (a version comparison page).  IMO, it should be totally up front that the free version is "crippled" in some pertinent way.  Otherwise, people will be "tricked" into downloading and spending their time on something which they could have known up front that wouldn't work for them without their buying a paid-license.  I fully support your desire to have some people convert to the paid-license model, but IMO it should be totally up front.  That would be very easy to do:  create a "Versions" tab on your website and have a side-by-side comparison between the paid and unpaid versions.  Then people could decide on whether or not to pursue trying the free version of VDH, knowing that there will likely be a QR code in the downloaded video if they don't pay for a license.
3. I have been using VDH for about a year and never knew about the QR code until today (because it doesn't affect my use case), so I was very surprised to see it pop up in a new window today.
4. I hope I'm making my point clear.  I appreciate VDH and free/FOSS software in general (and I contribute myself towards those goals), but I am very much against software which doesn't make it's licensing model clear up front, because that causes a mismatch between people's expectations and reality.  I was very surprised to learn about the watermarking, seeing as how I have been using VDH (on Linux) for about a year and I've never heard of this.  I'm hoping you can work towards a simple change that will make it clear that there is a pertinent difference between the free and paid versions that many people may care about.
   

After some more experimenting, I see this kind of page, which I have never seen before today:  The page URL (in firefox) is moz-extension://65b7a1b8-7be4-43d8-adc0-414af1f1e8d3/content/explain-qr.html?panel=explainqr#tbvws%3Ao-AAalI5gUf5n8Pr3juEmGqr2DPrOyOMEq48iRe0Z-JOlU%3A244/251

The text of the page is this:

The file "..." has been generated.
You will notice the resulting video contains a watermark in the corner.
This is because you chose an ADP variant and the conversion feature has not
been registered.
Tell more about this | Get a conversion license
Do not see that message again

[mig]

The message you are referring to is implemented in the add-on and has been there for years, BUT you mentioned you were using Linux, and on this OS, there is no licensing of any kind, the system behaves silently as if you were premium. This is our contribution to the open source ecosystem.

[John Wiersba]

OK.  Thank you for that!  So that explains why I had never noticed this before.  But this morning, I did notice it on my linux desktop, so something changed (regressed) in that environment (firefox on linux) to now start making this noticeable.  I don't have access to my Linux desktop now, but I believe I still saw the QR code watermarking in a short video that I downloaded, so maybe that "no licensing" feature on linux got broken somehow?  I will run another test later when I'm home.

[mig]

There is indeed a hidden parameter to have Linux behaving like Windows and Mac regarding licensing (as i develop VDH primarily on Linux, i use this to test licensing stuff) but you are unlikely to have changed this parameter (it takes another add-on to do so and a very specific action).

Can you go to VDH settings and check the main tab ? It should state your OS and the licensing status. On Linux, it should say "License is not needed".

[John Wiersba]

It does indeed say "Our contribution to Linux: no license is required".  Up further in the General tab says Video Downloadhelper 7.3.4.  I also notice that the upgrade outdated the Companion App (but somehow my Companion App was not outdated on the Windows version, I believe)

[John Wiersba]

In the Platform section, it says:

Platform Linux x86-64

Browser Mozilla Firefox 61.0.1

In the Video DownloadHelper 7.3.4 section, it says:

Video DownloadHelper

Version 7.3.4

Browser locale: en-US

Production build

Built on Tue Jul 10 2018 23:27:01 GMT+0200 (CEST)

Build options: browser=firefox

[mig]

 Things are what they are supposed to be (there has been an update to 7.3.5 yesterday but this is unlikely to have changed anything for that matter).

Can you confirm you are getting the watermark and describe exactly what you are doing, where you get the video from, the variant you pick, ... ?

[John Wiersba]

I did get the update to 7.3.5 today which opened a new browser tab https://www.downloadhelper.net/update?browser=firefox&from=7.3.4&to=7.3.5.  On that page, I chose 640x360 (other choices are DASH Streaming, 1280x720, 960x540).  That downloaded "DownloadHelper - Video download browser extension.mp4" (5546755 bytes).  It does *not* have the QR code.  I'm sure I saw a QR code yesterday,   So right now, I cannot duplicate what I thought happened yesterday with a QR code coming from a Linux download.

The situation was a little different yesterday.  VDH had auto-upgrade, but I had *not* yet installed the Companion App upgrade.  I was trying to figure out if the Companion App needed an upgrade and I couldn't see anywhere where it mentioned the version I needed, so I just decided to try to download a small video and see.  That's when I downloaded the video mentioned above, I believe, and saw another browser tab pop up (which I had never seen before) with the information about the QR code.  That video *did* have a QR code, I think.  Because I had never seen any of this before, I assumed that the QR code must be a new feature that had been added in the just auto-upgraded version.

I got even further confused when I tried the same thing on my Windows desktop at work, as I had never heard about or encountered the QR code before and I no idea that there would be a difference between Window and Linux.  As mig explained yesterday that the Linux version doesn't embed the watermark.

I have a better understanding of these things now and I will keep checking to see if I can get a Linux watermark when I see new auto-upgrades happen and report it if they do happen.

Thanks for all the help and discussion.  As I mentioned yesterday, I believe it would be helpful to mention the QR code more explicitly, maybe in a Side-by-side Version Comparison tab of the website.  I do appreciate that the Linux version does *not* have a QR code, as that is a nice kind of payback to the Linux community.