Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

They'll provide "tools and manuals". If this includes service software that is good. Also I wonder what kind of detail is there in those service manuals. For the mechanical components I would at least expect drawings of each assembly showing every gear, every seal, every clip with spec. For electronics I would expect at least board view files if not schematics. Do I believe this will happen before it is law to publish it? Not really.

When finally those laws get proposed I fully expect manufacturers to claim "security and IP theft" exceptions and politicians will fold. I still have electronic equipment made in the 80's that had not just schematics in its manual, but pcb layout drawings so you could remake a pcb if it got destroyed... And somehow we didn't have clones of this equipment appear.

> Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon.

I can't see how, the same people pushing for WTO/NAFTA are those who profited immensely from outsourcing in the 80s-90s are now the same one who likely stand to benefit the most from either supply chain disruptions, and war.

The truth is that JD is just another monopoly ([0] over 50% market share of tractors) that represents the underlying aspects of crony capitalism writ large. This is just another example how the mantra that 'tech should be in everything' needs to die, and how pervasive these horrible practices can become for the small sector of humans (less than 1% of the Human population feeds the other 99%) who grow the food everyone eats.

MBAs making supply chains inherently fragile and over who valued BS things like JIT are just reflecting what is most rewarded in the corpo culture: quick profits are the way to get fat bonuses and stock options in order to bail out when even the slightest hint of head-winds occur. This is just a symptom, not the cause and a reason why US manufacturing will likely take some time before it can get off it's addiction to the garbage made in China.

0: https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-j...

Here's my analysis of what's going to happen if this goes through.

First, quote from the MOU [1]:

> AFBF agrees to encourage state Farm Bureau organizations to recognize the commitments made in this MOU and refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state "Right to Repair" legislation that imposes obligations beyond the commitments in this MOU. In the event any state or federal legislation or regulation relating to issues covered by this MOU and/or "Right to Repair" is enacted, each of AFBF and Manufacturer reserve the right, upon fifteen (15) days written notice, to withdraw from this MOU.

It might play out like this:

1. Deere starts a half hearted parts process. They will provide some parts, there will be year long delays in roll out, it will be annoying to use, documentation will be made incomplete on purpose by leaving out random pages or drawings and there will be no way to get them to fix it.

2. Farmers are now locked into using this service for their existing deere equipment because anything else will bankrupt them. Those machines will remain in service for a good 10-20 years which is an important time frame, because

3. Deere will spin off a subsidiary or buy a competitor which will sell what used to be Deere branded technology, "under license". This "new company" will keep all the anti-repair technology in place. New products will primarily come from this company going forward, and the products will be priced so that actual Deere-branded products are not competitive any more, especially second-hand ones.

4. It is now 2028. The MOU cannot be broken because farmers still need parts for their "old" Deere products. Deere anti right to repair lives on in the artificial competitor, which now retains 90% market ownership. Farmers cannot argue for right to repair any more. They've been sold out. Everything has gone back to normal for at least the next 25 years, as far as Deere is concerned.

[1] https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf

Do you have any personal experience or opinion if this law/metric is helpful for consumers in praxis?

> "allow farmers to repair their own equipment" - What a terrible state of affairs if this is an exception rather than the norm. :(

Blame your fellow 'I'm just making money' loose ethics type programmer, they could just as easily be making drones used to destroy entire apartment buildings or the privacy-intruding facial recognition with that type reasoning, but instead they choose to deny farmers from making the food that you eat instead.