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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

#161

Post by avidphantasm »

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.…

When I worked on a vegetable farm in Vermont one summer, it was instantly apparent that the farmer spent a lot of time (at least 25%?) maintaining and fixing tractors. It’s a shame that rampant financialization and rent seeking has yet again made farmers’ lives more difficult.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#162

Post by lotsofpulp »

alvah wrote: post #150
lotsofpulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have heard root and rowt when referring to roads in the US, but I have always used rout, and I think I have heard it more commonly used than root.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#163

Post by clord »

throwaway20222 wrote: post #29
rjzzleep wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sometimes wonder if companies should/could be forced to publish a “lifetime cost” of all of their products, much like we do energy ratings for appliances. Something that would show all of the expenses over the lifetime of the products, including estimated maintenance and lifespan before replacement so people have a better idea of the true cost of the purchase. I am confident the reporting would likely be captured b…

Even if they only did this with the maintenance schedule costs, with breakouts for major possible maintenance incidents, in present dollars. That would be extremely useful.

Companies like consumer reports should do this sort of thing.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#164

Post by fluoridation »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #155
pama wrote: post #152

Why is it illegal infringement if one modifies embedded software locally (as opposed to selling it). Is that not the equivalent of writing a note within a book? “assure that the intellectual property of Manufacturer, including copyrighted software, is fully protected from illegal infringement through the modification of Embedded Software; …”

You can have right of repair in 1 day the free market way - no copyright protection, patents or damages awarded for chip firmware or repair manuals. This is the great fraud of our time - Right to Repair is portrayed as government intervention in the free market and excersise in socialism When actually it is the Government that grants John Deer artifical monopoly on bits and bites and doesn't just fine, but imprisons…

I agree that copyright sucks, but I don't see, in copyright-free world, what would prevent a hardware manufacturer from making the firmware impossible to modify for example by using hardcoded signature verification.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#165

Post by randomdata »

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.

My great uncle hated John Deere (for what reason, I'm not sure). His grandson runs the farm now and there is still not a John Deere in sight. If more people hated John Deere, they would be out of business. You can't survive if nobody buys your product.

I own some John Deere equipment on my farm, alongside equipment from all of the major brands. I find no measurable difference in experience across dealing with those brands, and they are all great compared to other products in my life. Repairability in everyday life is actually quite horrendous compared to farm equipment. My broom broke the other day and I have no idea where to even begin looking for parts to fix it. I'm going to have to buy a new broom to replace it.

When my farm equipment breaks, the parts department at the local dealer will bend over backwards to find what I need.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#166

Post by 3np »

mherdeg wrote: post #147
boltzmann-brain wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're conveniently missing the crucial part of 5k subscribers to your newsletter. For 1b you may even need 10k.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#167

Post by ClumsyPilot »

fluoridation wrote: post #164
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have right of repair in 1 day the free market way - no copyright protection, patents or damages awarded for chip firmware or repair manuals. This is the great fraud of our time - Right to Repair is portrayed as government intervention in the free market and excersise in socialism When actually it is the Government that grants John Deer artifical monopoly on bits and bites and doesn't just fine, but imprisons…

I agree that copyright sucks, but I don't see, in copyright-free world, what would prevent a hardware manufacturer from making the firmware impossible to modify for example by using hardcoded signature verification.

If the tractor is my property, I don't understand what gives John Derr the right to prevent me from modifying it how I see fit.

Imagine they did this with a physical object, broke into your house and stopped you from opening the engine - that would be tresspass and a dozen other crimes. Why is it legal just because it's digital?

This is why people are calling it Neo-feudalism or digital feudalism, the relationship is lile between me the serf and john deer the medieval Lord

Also I am not against copyright, but it was created for books 200 years ago, not control software that determines if you go bancrupt, or live or die.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#168

Post by mindslight »

causi wrote: post #57
mindslight wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You basically already have a Constitution-esque "right to root", as changing the software on hardware you own is not illegal. What we're actually dealing with is technical measures that can effectively prevent us from doing so. There are a few legal hooks that augment the natural landscape (DMCA, contract terms, etc), but remove those and the problem would remain. So unfortunately, what we're really looking for is so…

changing the software on hardware you own is not illegal Not true. The DMCA makes it illegal to "circumvent" DRM schemes. It's also illegal to carrier-unlock your phone without your carrier's permission.

I acknowledged the DMCA. The DMCA and other legal restrictions are indeed problems. Another one is likely emissions requirements, which at the very least discourage tractor owners from replacing the computers wholesale.

But even if these legal restrictions were to vanish tomorrow, we'd still be stuck with a similar landscape - most manufacturer control comes from technical restrictions combined with a high rate of churn so even if someone invests the time to figure something out, it quickly becomes yesterday's model. Fundamentally, understanding is more difficult than creation.

The calculus could be different on tractors, which are meant to last a real long time. Except the topic here too is focused on getting companies to positively supply things to help, rather than removing laws that hinder (FTA: "The agreement creates a mechanism to address farmers’ concerns and give them access to resources needed to repair their own equipment, such as diagnostic and repair codes, manuals and product guides.")

So my ultimate point is that you need to move past thinking that a Constitutional "right to repair" law would address these problems. Such a thing would be as ineffectual as the Constitutional "freedom of speech" has been in addressing the social media oligopoly.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#170

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

staringback wrote: post #154
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> pass a law that says if you "tamper" with the device, all warranties expressed or implied are null and void This is a terrible idea. There is a very good reason "warranty void if removed" stickers are unenforceable in the US due to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act

"Well... we're waiting!" What's the very good reason? Because it's certainly not apparent to me.
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