211–220 of 229 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why should something so explicitly... tampering... as, say, REFLASHING an ECM for a diesel engine, NOT exempt the manufacturer from third-party stupidity? This is what I can't wrap my head around. Where's the limit of legal liability? IS there no limit? Are the people milling about my company, excusing every added layer of bureaucracy due to being liable if a customer chips their Dodge Ram, melting the exhaust sys…
If the customer rechips their ECU and melts their exhaust into the floor, you can absolutely deny the exhaust repair under warranty. You just have to be able to prove the modification caused the problem in the first place. edit - and I tend to view encrypted ROMs, etc., as being more about pulling the kind of anti-consumer/anti-repair shenanigans discussed in the original article than any genuine concern about limiti…
"But they kept the copyright to all data and electronic tools. You have to buy their equipment and many manuals amounting to over 20k for each piece of equipment in most cases. I talked to one of the john deere mechanics, he said he only knows of one farm that has done so because of the price but did so because he also hired a guy that use to work for john deere. I thing the Most important thing farmer's get out of it is the access to the diagnostic codes and JD manuals that can be used to trouble shoot the problem once you have the code. I've seen the software used and it is dynamite. It talks the mechanic through most steps of the trouble shooting. Since everything is computerized, almost need it to understand the electronic issues which of course is all stored on the individual computer components. One for transmission,engine, power train couplings and all other devices. Yet again, it costs approximately 5-7 hundred dollars just for the mechanic to show up at the farm, each time.. so if it doesn't get fixed or no parts til the next day, that's 2 trips which doesn't include any labor... "
> In the agreement, the AFBF says it will encourage “state Farm Bureau organizations to recognize” these commitments and “refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state ‘Right to Repair’ legislation.[^1]
[^1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/9/23546323/john-deere-right-...
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
There are a lot of physical systems that are capable of damaging themselves if they operate in an unconstrained manner - so the limitations are software defined.
Look, for example, at what Stuxnet is capable of doing to industrial centrifuges.
Now, it's somewhat unlikely that user defined software will cause damage comparable to active malware - but mistakes do happen.
(marcus0x62's comment pretty much invalidates what I just said.)
I frankly don’t trust the product of a company who has been actively trying to screw over their customers for the past 20 years.
My guess is they know that there are enough parts now that are proprietary and difficult to clone that they are going to have to go the the Deere dealer anyway. Like modern cars those things are loaded with computers and sensors. You have the right to repair it, but that doesn’t mean you have any hope to.
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.…
Another MBA'ed company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
After the product people you have the marketing people come in. They don’t really know how to evolve the product, but they know how to sell it and generally they know not to mess with a good product and the company makes a lot of money and grow to the logical maximum of whatever product or services they offer.
Eventually the marketing people reach the limit and then the finance people come in. And this is when a company fully gets gutted. To the bean counters every thing is a bean. They look at the good successful product and think, “how can we make this cost less to make.” So they cut every corner they can to make numbers go up on a spreadsheet. At first this is okay, because it is just a few changes that aren’t that big of a deal, but 30 change later and customers notice and are irate and swear off the company forever.
Not satisfied they will usually cut internal costs too and all of the good employee will leave.
The company then sometimes brings back in a product person and rebounds or sells off to private equity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this probably aims to thwart legislative action probably? From Section 3 of the 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. https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf It's a blatant threat that they'll…
The easy fix here is to make clauses like this unenforceable in the right to repair bills. Not that they’ll do it, but law outranks contracts.
This of course means that the only way to fix this without harming consumers is federal laws which is shitty because grassroots legal progress is far more preferable.
" allow farmers to repair their own equipment" - What a terrible state of affairs if this is an exception rather than the norm. :(
> "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…
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
If I have a software safety check in a giant combine harvester: if person detected Farmer finds it annoying so they install a "patch" they found on the Internets that disables it. Now there are two major options legally: * The law states that it's the company who is responsible for this safety feature, therefore the company tries to lock down the hardware/software as much as possible * The law states that modifications null/void certain parts of the warranty & other bits.
If I have a warranty on a CPU, isn't it void if I overvolt that CPU to the point it dies? Don't you think it should be? Afaik it's accepted that warranties on cars are void if you do something stupid with them.