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Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

wsj.com

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Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#141

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

rjzzleep wrote: post #26
29athrowaway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another MBA'ed company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

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.

What's the flip side? VC's? You know, the people who won't even start a company unless there's a way to try to monopolize the position, buy up all supply with seed money, and then extract ALL the possible rent from the market segment? "Long-term" thinking with precisely the same anti-competitive, anti-consumer end result.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#142

Post by zaroth »

causi wrote: post #82
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the DRM protects a copyrighted work, and even then only if the "protection" goes beyond protecting the software from being executed/used. (Chamberlain v. Skylink)

Root allows the user to bypass DRM such as Widevine.

But then it’s not gaining root which is the problem, it’s (as always) what you proceed to do with it.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#143

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

voakbasda wrote: post #39

Too little too late. They have burned good faith, and this move stinks of more manipulation. As others suggested, this probably aims to thwart legislative action, and they will make everything available at an inaccessibly exorbitant price point and inexcusable lead times. Seriously, Deere has been a market leader in alienating customers for years. There is no possibility that this is being done for the benefit of the…

There's a knock-on effect too. I work for a technology-adjacent company, and the biggest push the company has been making for the past 10 years -- right after being woke and going green, of course -- is implementing a whole bunch of "cybersecurity" measures into our product that feels an awful lot like they're cribbing their answers from Deere, to prevent a handful of people from reprogramming the device. The whole thing is excused with, "But but but the customer may make a modification that we didn't endorse, and we could be sued out of existence!" Fine, then go the other way. Ask your Congresspeople to pass a law that says if you "tamper" with the device, all warranties expressed or implied are null and void, and if it breaks, you can't sue. I don't understand what's so hard about that. I really don't.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#144

Post by jelliclesfarm »

Tractor market will soon be geared towards Farming-As-A-Service. John Deere has already bought multiple autonomous tractor companies. The biggest ones at 305 and 250 million are Blue River and Bear Flag,

Also: JV with GUSS automation orchard spraying tech. And Light for some kind of vision AI. There is a ‘startup incubator’ guy sitting in SF and JD is furiously buying everything they can get their hands on. In fact, I know at least two moderately funded startups whose sole aim is to be acquired by JD.

Meanwhile Case IH/CNH is also invested in Raven(that I like a lot actually and can give a good run for JD who hasn’t been lagging behind in the grain/combine automation equip). AGCO/Massey/Fendt is looking at the retrofit sector. Bless their hearts.

It’s time to consolidate just like with the Ag inputs/seeds/fertilizer where I think a few giants control almost all of the market after a flurry of mergers and acquisitions: Dow/DuPont, Sygenta/ChemChina, Bayer/Monsanto. BASF stands alone but they are not big on seeds. Dow/DuPont merged but then spun off Corteva, but it’s still incestous. It’s the Big4 now. Same thing will happen with the tractor and equipment sector with the main players being JD, CNH and AGCO.

It is what it is.

ETA: Let’s not forget how JD almost bought Monsanto before it went before DoJ to stop the sale and Bayer ended up paying 60 something billion for a lemon right before the Roundup trial. JD desperately wanted Climate Fieldview and Monsanto that owned Climate did NOT include it in the sale to Bayer. Fun times.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#145

Post by jlkuester7 »

geraldwhen wrote: post #112
Neil44 wrote: post #68

I'm not a farmer but harvest time can be pretty intense. You might only have a narrow window to get certain crops in where the crops are ready and the weather has been right and your onward destination can accept them physically and contractually. So have all the other farms. And that crop represents your yearly income. So you have all this demand in this time window and you have equipment sitting there cause compute…

Harvest season is 15-16 hour days for months, all hands on deck. The upside is that the pay is wildly better than any other time. I’ve known a few farmhands and they claimed to not mind harvest season because of the pay.

When my brother and I were in college, I worked as a farm hand the same summer he was working a computer engineering internship. His hours were capped at 39/wk and he still made more money per week than I did working 80/wk.

I loved farming, but there is not a ton of money in unskilled labor. (Sure, you can do a lot better if you have skills/experience or own the farm...)

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#146

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

jacquesm wrote: post #109

Deere's competitors should go all-in on maintainability and documentation as a countermove. When it starts to eat into their marketshare they'll pay attention, until then they will just drag their heels as much as legally possible. Unfortunately Case IH, New Holland, Claas and Kubota all have a similar attitude towards their customers, which makes this an industry wide problem, not a John Deere problem. Legislators s…

Yeah, it's kind of a joke to say that there's no problem with the "free market" in the American version of capitalism when all the big players collude on the same anti-consumer position, because they all win, and their execs take home more options and pay because of it.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#147

Post by mherdeg »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #75
mulmen wrote: post #13

Deere’s position on right to repair is heartbreaking to me. I paid for books (and beer) in college as a truck driver and mechanic for a custom harvest operation. We ran Deere 6602 combines from the 1970s, in the early 2000s. Deere’s tagline was “nothing runs like a Deere” but in my experience it was more like “nothing can be made to run like a Deere”. We spent a lot of time on maintenance but very little on repairs.…

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 regul…

I think what you're saying is there's a market for

(1) go and do farm work for a few years, doing anything anybody needs for a few medium sized operations and talking to everybody

(2) pick one product and advertise that you're building a competitor, emphasize that it's maintainable in the field and made from commodity parts

(3) struggle to actually launch or sell it because manufacturing physical stuff is incredibly hard. Take lots of outside investment

(4) ship 100 units and credibly claim to be able to ship many more

(5) Deere will buy you for $1bn and shut it down, which was your plan the whole time

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#148

Post by amelius »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #34
andrewstuart wrote: post #27

Amazing that there are businesses that do so well financially they can abuse their customers to the point of hatred, yet remain in business.

That's what happens when you're a monopoly.

... and watchdogs are sleeping.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#150

Post by alvah »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #91
causi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the region. I'm from the US and I've never heard somebody say "rooter"

Me either. All over the US, I have only ever heard “row-ter”. And my British family says “roo-ter”.

Is it Root 66 or Rowt 66 though? Because a rooter is related to roots.
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