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Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

While this is great news; I unfortunately have to wonder how effective this is going to be. We need likely a much, much larger subset of farmers joining such a class action lawsuit - ideally from as many states as possible - to get this to change.

Out of their greed; John Deere will fight this with all they have.

I still think the best solution to this is still a startup that can create tractors that don’t require repairs by a first party. I understand the difficulties behind such an operation, but I’m unfortunately not sure how successful such a lawsuit will be in America without the hell of a lot more ‘ooomph’ behind it.

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> I still think the best solution to this is still a startup that can create tractors that don’t require repairs by a first party.

You're still going up against massively entrenched and influential opposition that could likely undercut a startup's prices and then raise them again once the competition dies.

We saw it with the rideshare companies. Their business models are flexible enough to take losses when necessary in order to beat out alternatives and then programmatically raise the prices again once they've captured the market again.

The issue is they are operating in the printer ink model where the initial price is discounted based on expected future revenue. That’s a hard nut to crack because any open competition is fighting from a seeming price disadvantage.

Just wanted to say thank you for the insightful comment.

> That’s a hard nut to crack because any open competition is fighting from a seeming price disadvantage.

What other markets are there, where new entrants face the same problem?

Is it possible to invest in this lawsuit? Considering how Peter Theil invested in the Hogan lawsuit, perhaps there should be a legal investment concept.

Edit: Well, it appears there is something like this already. "Crowd Justice" https://www.crowdjustice.com/

I would like to see a much broader decision, something

    * applying to all products, not just ag
    * allowing my choice of parts
    * allow me or my choice of shop to work on it
    * no cryptographic DRM'ed parts
    * access to schematics, shop manuals, and admin/interface software

IIRC, investing in lawsuits can also open you up to liability if you lose.

I've been hearing about farmers trying to organize for at least the past 5 years to tackle this. I'm not going to hold my breath for much progress, sadly.

An "open tractor" from a new company is also going to be hard to justify with how thin margins are with farming.

Maybe some techies can get together to make repair easier. New electronic control boards, diagrams of how to machine their own replacement parts, etc. for the most popular tractors people own.

It's a tough problem to solve, but one worth fighting any way we can.

Wonder if they could start buying company stock to get enough voting power to make a difference...

No entity can legally own more than 10% of John Deere's stock. I forget why that rule is. Something they are in, perhaps finance? If farmers are acting as a group they probably would be in trouble for individual purchases that collectively violate the rules.

> I still think the best solution to this is still a startup that can create tractors that don’t require repairs by a first party.

Do other tractor manufacturers have Deere-style DRM? I imagine some don't.

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