> John Deere declined to be interviewed but sent a lengthy statement outlining its concerns. The company doesn’t want people altering its copyright-protected code because, said director of public relations Ken Golden, “changes could lead to the unsafe operation of products, disruption of machine capabilities and performance, changes to emissions controls, voiding of warranties and lack of transparency to the changes when the equipment is sold to another user”.

But yeah, money.

One thing that gets lost in this particular controversy, IMO, is that John Deere is effectively a monopoly in this space. If farmers were able to choose between tractors that were built like Dell laptops vs ones built like iPads…

So this is a problem of digital rights, but one could argue that it’s also a problem of deregulation and lack of competition.

It's still a bit sad that there's no opt-in into such deal, ad that farmers don't seem to have another alternative.