Iowa farmers are leading the fight for repair
ifixit.com
ifixit.com
The problem is that both sides are correct. The core of the R2R argument is about ownership instead of merely "licensing" from the manufacturer. Repair monopolies create an artificial scarcity, destroying economic efficiency, market competition and planned obsolescence (defeating environmental stewardship). A centralized repair model is a single point of failure, weakening resilience and national security.
Manufacturers have a strong argument against right-to-repair from the perspective of system integrity and safety - one can imagine unintended consequences and liability cascades from imperfect repair. Protection of intellectual property isn't just about software piracy and trade secrets, as opening up firmware access creates a cybersecurity nightmare of backdoors, raising environmental and regulatory compliance issues. The authorized dealer model isn't just about a monopoly - it’s about a guaranteed standard of care.
The current compromise is a subscription-based access model Memorandum of Understanding, where for a tiered subscription the John Deere customer gets a restricted version of the dealer's software [2]. The "Gotcha" in the MOU is that many farmers feel this was a bad trade because the manufacturer can change the price or the terms of the website at any time — whereas a law would be permanent.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2018/02/01/apple-verizon-continue-t...
[2] https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/repair/customer-service...
It's America. You should want that. What you don't want is a mecca for criminals and pirates. I'm not sure how fixing my own tractor leads to criminal acts and there are already robust trade rights protections in the US.
> The problem is that both sides are correct.
Isn't the whole problem here the collateral damage caused by the DMCAs provision against circumvention? Then it seems one side is completely wrong and the other side is completely correct. If you own the device then "circumvention" is meaningless. If the device can't operate without firmware then it's inside the envelope and can be circumvented fairly.
> one can imagine unintended consequences and liability cascades from imperfect repair.
Yea we'd have to develop a robust legal system for managing this; however, we could also just use the one that already exists.
They're probably pre-criming the killdozer or something.
If some firmware is buggy and pose cybersecurity issues, hiding that will not help, as sooner or later someone will discover those bugs anyway (and will turn good old John Deere into B-class horror movie serial killer machine).
So I am not buying manufacturers arguments. If they were honest, they would said openly they want to earn money on overpriced service because CEO wants to earn more and stakeholders are after him.
> Manufacturers have a strong argument against right-to-repair from the perspective of system integrity and safety - one can imagine unintended consequences and liability cascades from imperfect repair.
No they dont. This is not even honest argument. There is no liability cascade from bad repair, in normal setup you loose liability when doing own repair. That is it. There is nothing new or obscure about it.
> The authorized dealer model isn't just about a monopoly - it’s about a guaranteed standard of care.
As long as it is not mandatory. The moment you make it mandatory, it is about monopoly.
Heck, if they put in losing of warranty after tinkering BUT made their devices tinkerable farmers would still go for them.
Another point to all those apple apologists claiming how its more moral company than literally any other mega corporation. I take those posts in good faith as simple paid PR (and not utterly clueless folks who need some dumbed down black&white version of reality to survive in it), which should be forbidden here but we all know how upholdable such rule could be.
Why was that never a problem in 100 years of existence of vehicles before? Why are we suddently worrying about these "liability cascades" at the expense of market competition?
1) Safety. In the 20th century, safety was mostly passive. Today safety is active. For example, vehicles now use ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). If an independent shop replaces a windshield but doesn't have the proprietary software to recalibrate the cameras behind the glass, the car's Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) might see a phantom obstacle at 70 mph and slam on the brakes. Manufacturers argue (correctly in my view) that they cannot be held liable for a car that decides to crash because a third party misaligned its digital vision.
2) Cybersecurity. There was no backdoor to a 1950s tractor because it wasn't connected to anything. Most modern vehicles are telemetric, where they are connected to the internet via cellular 5G. Manufacturers argue that if they provide open diagnostic ports to everyone, they are effectively creating a standardized digital doorway that a bad actor could use to remotely disable a fleet of tractors across the entire farming sector. In their view, right to repair creates a national security vulnerability that didn't exist when machines were dumb.
3) Environmental. If John Deere is forced to provide software tools to access the engine, a farmer might buy a "delete kit" online that uses software to bypass the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF). This allows the tractor to run more powerfully and skip expensive emissions fluid (DEF). Deere is understandably legally terrified that the EPA will fine them as the manufacturer for facilitating emissions tampering. They are using this regulatory shield to argue that the only way to save the planet is to keep the software under lock and key.
4) The 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. This gets interesting. Back in the day manufacturers tried to say, "If you don't use our oil/parts, your warranty is void." The Act legally protected the owner's right to use aftermarket parts. That law was written for physical parts. It doesn't say anything about digital handshakes. Today, a manufacturer can't void your warranty for using a 3rd party air filter, but they can make the engine refuse to start unless a certified digital code is entered by a dealer-authorized laptop.
Because it's heck of a lot of convenience that this newfound safety issues result in destruction of market competiton of spare parts manufacturers and repair houses while ensuring practically unlimited margins and payments from the site of customers.
Why is there now a panic about it?
(Yes, I know the answer is: the manufacturer wants to extract money from it, but let's play this game where we defend corpos.)
We already have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
"Commencing in model year 2022 and thereafter a manufacturer of motor vehicles sold in the Commonwealth, including heavy duty vehicles having a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 14,000 pounds, that utilizes a telematics system shall be required to equip such vehicles with an inter-operable, standardized and open access platform across all of the manufacturer's makes and models. Such platform shall be capable of securely communicating all mechanical data emanating directly from the motor vehicle via direct data connection to the platform. Such platform shall be directly accessible by the owner of the vehicle through a mobile-based application and, upon the authorization of the vehicle owner, all mechanical data shall be directly accessible by an independent repair facility"
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXV/Cha...
A lot of it is based on industry association rules (業界団体ルール), not enforceable regulation. For example, major electronics companies sometimes disclose a parts retention period (部品保有期限), like keeping parts for X years, but that is mostly traditional large companies.
I live near Deere corporate headquarters, and saw their employment advertisements for low-level firmware security experts.
2017, Apple and John Deere famously joined forces in Nebraska to fight an early R2R bill. An Apple lobbyist told Nebraska legislators that passing the bill would make the state a "Mecca for hackers," a talking point that has
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
(This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)
Farmers should be able to swap parts, tweak loads of things in software, etc without software locks. I should be able to do that on my car too. But the way to achieve that is not through spending a few hundreds of thousands of dollars on Opus [latest] and praying that doesn't kill me, that's the part I have an issue with in OPs comment.
Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.
If you need assurances, have a different LLM write the test suite.
Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
"Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth.
The Ukranian farming community birthed the cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc.
#NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
Really?
I've been a software developer since 1980 or so, never ever touched web development .. horses for courses I guess.
Interfacing with machines and instruments, no worries.
Circling back, the farmers I know want to be able to maintain everything they can within their local circle (state and federal) without being forced to reach out overseas to foreign companies such as John Deere.
Eg: Our local farmers co-op run their own rail networks and bulk handling facilities.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131063
> Software for farm equipment is very specific field.
Meh - there's a lot of overlap with avionics, GIS data aquisition, mining equipment (autonomous trucks, trains, processing circuit control), general industrial applications, etc.
I'm a farmer, but I've messed about with geophysical data aquisition across entire countries, industrial control, abstract algebra systems (Cayley / Magma), sheep shearing robotics, and other fun stuff.
But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!
Given that, the farmer or vibe coder is still going to have to take responsibility for making sure the software is verifiable and correct. Thats a heavy responsibility with a huge peice of machinery like this, its naive to equate that with making sure your todo list app or even c compiler works.
The economic calculus still means its better for an corporation to take on that responsibility, and be compensated for it. Now we just need that corporation to not be rent seeking dicks, and we could have a good thing going
Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break.
Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201.
Law is code.