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

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.

Comments

Solution

[alvinrod]

Don't buy John Deere. If I were one of their competitors, I'd be jumping all over this to steal their customers.

Re:Solution

[elrous0]

Believe me, if Case or any other competitors thought that farmers would actually be willing to pay higher prices for equipment without the restrictions on right to repair, they would have already jumped on it on long time ago. The reality is that making "open source" equipment means less guaranteed revenue after you sell that equipment, which means you have to sell it at a higher upfront cost. And the harsh reality is that farmers, for all their blustering, are unwilling to pay that upfront cost. If they were, you can bet that Case and many others would already be offering that easy-to-repair equipment and making a killing over Deere.

Re:Solution

[elrous0]

So, you are saying that farmers don't really want or need the ability to repair their own equipment?

No, I'm saying they're too cheap to pay the upfront cost for it. If Case said "We'll offer you an easy-to-repair version of this tractor for a little more upfront cost" farmers would still opt for the cheaper locked-down version instead. And that's why Case and others don't bother. If there were money to be made in selling easy-to-repair tractors, someone would have jumped on it a long time ago and would be crushing Deere right now.
 

Re:Solution

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Believe me, if Case or any other competitors thought that farmers would actually be willing to pay higher prices for equipment without the restrictions on right to repair, they would have already jumped on it on long time ago

If I may say, this is an incomplete analysis. If a company could steal property, sabotage competitors, and advertise fraudulently, by this competitive standard, they would. They don't partly because it becomes evident, partly because many employees would object, and partly because there are strong regulations against it. Raw profitability is rarely the full reasons not to do something in the business world.

In this case, it's consumer protection laws and working relationships with repair centers that encourage companies to make repair tools and tuning tools available. But the repair and maintenance costs are tremendous. And keeping the repair data proprietary or keeping it a trade secret has often been ruled or legislated as illegal, since the purchaser cannot apply their full ownership and privileges to control their own equipment without that data.

Concern trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Like anyone on Slashdot gives a shit about California farmers. Haters on Slashdot only want to complain about farmers: using water, not treating farm animals like pets, not voting for the latest ultra-progressive fetish grievance rights, not setting aside half their land for some worthless endangered rat habitat. Now concern trolling about tractor repairs.

Re:Concern trolling

[Gravis Zero]

Like anyone on Slashdot gives a shit about California farmers.

You're right, few here care about the farmers but we do care about the status of Right To Repair legislation. It should be obvious that this kind of legislation is applicable to DRM and service schemes everywhere to keep tech savvy people (like slashdotters) out. You may be surprised to hear it but tons of stuff (like your car, various smart devices, etc) are all "you don't really own it" things.

That said, I do have a friend (via IRC) that is a tech savvy farmer (in Iowa) and I would like him to hack and repair his tractors to his heart's content.

Depends on how they got the lobbying group

[rsilvergun]

to capitulate. Did they buy off a bunch of them? Sounds like it. I can't imagine why else a lobbying group for farmers would do the exact opposite of what their constituents want.

Re: The capitalist solution?

[peragrin]

They are plus a ukraining company that I can't remember.

However tractors tend to be long term investment s(20-40 years) and change is slow. This law was focusing on people who bought tractors 10- 15 years ago and need updates and repair work.

John Deere is long term destroying their brand. So sad.

Re:The capitalist solution?

[hey!]

It's not like buying something like oil. It's capital investment and it affect the stuff you've already bought.

This is Deere turning an occasional choice about which farmers do have choice into regular payments for which they won't have choice.

This all reminds me of something Gandhi once said. A reporter asked him what he thought of Western Civilization, and he replied that he thought it would be a good idea. Capitalism only works because of competition, but companies do everything they can to avoid actually competing, for example making it hard to compare their products to other vendors (boy to vendors hate being in "commodity" businesses), or in this case by trying to make it difficult for customers to choose competitors for some transactions.

And if it's legal to evade competiing, why not? The fact that this undermines the justification for capitalism isn't your problem. This is a situation where you need regulation to ensure a free market can operate the way its' suppose to.

Re:Attention Californian farmers

[arbiter1]

Um liberal california gov screwed over its people, how is that anything new? The only people that gov listens to is people in the major cities.

Re:The capitalist solution?

[AlanObject]

Capitalism only works because of competition, but companies do everything they can to avoid actually competing ...

Good observation. I like to say that there is absolutely one thing that you can always count on a corporate entity to do: protect an established revenue stream.

A corporation does not have morals or loyalty even though many of them do their best to create the illusion. They will lie about science, bribe governments, destroy competitors if they can get away with it and often, if they have the short-term mindset and think they can get away with it, wring out their customer base like a dirty washrag. That last seems to be what is happening here.

Re:The capitalist solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, that's stupid. The barriers-to-entry are too high in a market this mature. But then, you knew that.

There is *nothing* un-capitalist about government regulation, so long as it is the right kind of regulation. Legislation that mandates that these software solutions be open and available for third-party modification is exactly the right kind of regulation that help keeps a market competitive.

Re: The capitalist solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

That remains to be seen. Musk has been more successful than, say, Fisker, but itâ(TM)s still more likely to join the ranks of Delorean, Packard, Duesenberg, and Steudebaker than it is to become another Mercedes, Ford, or Toyota.

But, He Chooses Not To

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk could well do so. But, so far he has fought on the opposite side. So, it seems that Musk is strenuously opposed to the right to repair concept and open software is just laughable.

Re:The capitalist solution?

[cbeaudry]

If governments did not have the power to dole out favors (crony... capitalism), competition would be possible.

The problem is always the government.