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Did John Deere Just Swindle California's Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair? (wired.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the old-MacDonald-had-a-sham dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a new Wired opinion piece by Kyle Wiens and Elizabeth Chamberlain from iFixit: A big California farmers' lobbying group just blithely signed away farmers' right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software. As an organization representing 2.5 million California agriculture jobs, the California Farm Bureau gave up the right to purchase repair parts without going through a dealer. Farmers can't change engine settings, can't retrofit old equipment with new features, and can't modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own. Worse, the lobbyists are calling it a victory.... John Deere and friends had already made every single "concession" earlier this year...

Just after the California bill was introduced, the farm equipment manufacturers started circulating a flyer titled "Manufacturers and Dealers Support Commonsense Repair Solutions." In that document, they promised to provide manuals, guides, and other information by model year 2021. But the flyer insisted upon a distinction between a right to repair a vehicle and a right to modify software, a distinction that gets murky when software controls all of a tractor's operations. As Jason Koebler of Motherboard reported, that flyer is strikingly similar -- in some cases, identical word-for-word -- to the agreement the Farm Bureau just brokered...

Instead of presenting a unified right-to-repair front, this milquetoast agreement muddies the conversation. More worryingly, it could cement a cultural precedent for electronics manufacturers who want to block third-party repair technicians from accessing a device's software.

5 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. John Deere? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 5, Informative
    Right in the first sentence of TFS it says:

    A big California farmers' lobbying group just blithely signed away farmers' right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software.

    No swindle at all. Straight out agreement by the farmers' lobbying group.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    1. Re:John Deere? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      And this is not a law, it is merely a deal between Deere and this farmer's group.

      Farmers who choose not to be members in that group, can mess with sw all they want - exercising their right to repair. Sure, they won't get any source, so sw may have to be reverse engineered or written from scratch. Complicated, so go for some other tractor manufacturer. Perhaps a smaller actor can be talked into providing sw to repair shops - as a way of competing with Deere. Could get them some very loyal customers . . .

  2. No by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did John Deere Just Swindle California's Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair?

    No. Sounds like their own lobbying group did.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  3. Re:Depends on how they got the lobbying group by omnichad · · Score: 4, Informative

    The firmware blocks third-party parts using DRM. Any talk about the hardware is inextricable from the talk about software.

  4. Re: Depends on how they got the lobbying group by peragrin · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can't change a spark plugs and without a software override code on these tractors.

    Yes it is that bad.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.