211–220 of 359 posts
I wonder, is the a GPL tractor software project out there yet?
I don't know, but there is an open source tractor design: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac Primitive but think of Linux when it was released. It's part of the Global Village Construction Set, open source machines that could make up the technological basis for a civilization: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...
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edit: I have hopefully fixed all of the places where I incorrectly parsed "worked on software for" as indicating employment. > They have a real potential to end peoples lives in the event of failure I hope the lessons[1] learned from the Therac-25 are part of the design. Anything that dangerous needs to have defense in depth. If there are hardware limiters, interlocks, etc adding redundancy to the software check, the…
There is definitely defense in depth but, I never said the software was bug-free. :) Also you're doing the unfortunate thing of associating me as part of John Deere. I'm not. I had a small hand is writing a small part of this software, a long long time ago. I don't give a shit if they sell tractors or not. I don't care if farmers modify the software or not. I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm just a guy with…
Hey all, I worked on software for John Deere. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Opinions expressed here are MY OWN. I no longer work for John Deere or am associated with them in any way. I was part of one of the many teams that work on this software. Specifically I was part of John Deere's ISG division also known as the Intelligent Solutions Group. The ISG division (was at the time) responsible for tyi…
> John Deere tractors run on open source software Out of curiosity, what range of open source licenses appear in the code base? Do they use any software whose license requires source distribution? If so, are you aware of a "source code" page buried in John Deere's website, or some other mechanism by which they satisfy any distribution clauses?
Hey all, I worked on software for John Deere. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Opinions expressed here are MY OWN. I no longer work for John Deere or am associated with them in any way. I was part of one of the many teams that work on this software. Specifically I was part of John Deere's ISG division also known as the Intelligent Solutions Group. The ISG division (was at the time) responsible for tyi…
> If a team of hundred of engineers struggle with their codebase internally, Joe Farmer isn't going to have a fucking clue how to repair their software correctly. > But trust me on this, locking this down is a very good idea. Joe Farmer may not know, but Joe farmer has "the internet", and ability to pay an independent software engineer. And people would absolutely find and fix bugs that john deer is missing. Honestly…
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> Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. Very true. There are a few companies that engage sophisticated sock-puppetry on HN like P§l§nt$er, M$, M§n$ant§ and J§hn D$$r. Ethic should be a mandatory school subject. About dongled binary signed software in hardware devices. We sincerely need a law to prevent this. Tesla cars and John Deer tractors actively prevent the second…
I can understand MS but John Deere? Hard to credit that they'd be monitoring HN. I mean how many farmers read HN?
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Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. I really love the green account - nice touch. It really helps your authenticity to pretend like you are afraid of retribution from John Deere when you are totally kissing their asses. Let me ask you this -- why in the world do the lines of software you write prevent a qualified mechanic from changing a transmission? You know people…
Not on either side here, but I feel like you're missing the point there. Let's say someone does modify the code, then the machine messes up and ends up killing someone. Who would be the culprit there? I guess they could have something that detects when the software is modified, but even if they did, I bet it would still be poor publicity for them (similar to when people misuse Tesla's assist and getting in accidents)…
JD is a knife manufacturer who puts countermeasures to prohibit knives owners from sharpening second side of the blade (among others things). Because it can be dangerous.
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> Also nobody's being forced to buy new tractors, there's tons of old tractors still out and running and working every day. There are also fewer every day.
You'd be surprised how long old, robust vehicles live for. I don't have any clear data for tractors, but older trucks that can be repaired with minimum tooling get used and re-used in places in Africa, almost to no end.
Ergo, if a repair costs $1000 for a car worth $1000 it's not worth it, if that same repair costs just $100 it is.
My dad is a farmer and I can assure you that this is a real problem. Every piece of equipment now as its own proprietary, closed-source and, most of the time, incompatible software. Plus, many of them don't get any update after the product launch. When you are in rush to plant or harvest you just can`t afford to wait for an authorized dealer. And if they fail, good luck trying to find a replacement that is not 100x o…
Sounds like an opportunity...
Edit: it looks like the physical components themselves are DRMed? Wtf?
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I would say the JD's tractor software (if taken in it's entirety) is on par with the modern Linux kernel in size, if not larger. Worse yet, the codebase is spread along many different repositories, teams, and build systems. I've seen integration builds take days to finish (not including running of unit tests). Look I get it, John Deere is evil. But this codebase is beyond any one person or team's comprehension. It's…
You said there were 150-300 engineers working on this code. That is at least an order of magnitude less than the number of people developing Linux.