What is stopping people from reverse engineering, pirating, or bypassing John Deere software in order to make the necessary repairs or customisations?
Surely it can't be complexity as the open source community would make short work of that. I think the real problem here is the socialist concepts of copyright and intellectual property law that use the public purse and public legal system to prevent people bypassing John Deere. If you were to do away with that then the John Deere monopoly would crumble. Of course, you would be waiving all warranties and would be personally assuming full liability if any changes were made outside of the John Deere ecosystem. We have to stop socialising the costs of running a business.
There are numerous videos about how farmers are having to learn to 'hack' their tractors so they can fix them. Its possible, but shouldn't be necessary. Its a shady business practice to force your customers to only be able to get their equipment fixed at YOUR dealers/mechanics.
I grew up on a farm, but decided that farming was not for me; so I became an Electrical Engineer.
Not many farmers have the "hacker" aptitude. These are people who get up early, work hard, plan their day, work the land, and make the best decisions they can, with the data they have. They go to bed each night, weary - and sitting down at a computer and placing their "livelihood at risk" by hacking code they do not understand, is not very highly rated on the risk/consequence table.
they screw up one variable on the tractor, they either disable it, or cause something to break - or - they pay an inflated cost at the dealership and operate under warranty of the manufacturer.
Now, if a farmer can SEE a part that is apparently built with the same quality, is half the cost, and fits in their tractor at half the cost - that's another matter.
Remember these new machines are 200-500k+ in some cases and may be on lease. Even if they own it, they need parts and if the dealerships cut them off they could have a large expensive piece of scrap metal for the sake of a $1k part.
Secondarily, hacker culture is typically liberal leaning and city based, not farmers playing as a hobby.
In the right-to-repair/operate side of things, those with certain skills could make alternate 3D parts available to be machined. 3D scan stuff, use CAD to make part models to be shared.
Or reverse-engineer the computers in order to provide alternate operating systems.
If you don't have skills, but there are those who do, people could support them financially.
"Open hardware" is a path forward for this. Search the term for more information.
I believe some people are doing that with JD stuff, but don't quote me on that. I agree that the open source community can help, but there's many things which would be applicable - companies that are anti-consumer essentially. The entire economic system needs an overhaul, just like you stated.
What is stopping people from reverse engineering, pirating, or bypassing John Deere software in order to make the necessary repairs or customisations?
Surely it can't be complexity as the open source community would make short work of that. I think the real problem here is the socialist concepts of copyright and intellectual property law that use the public purse and public legal system to prevent people bypassing John Deere. If you were to do away with that then the John Deere monopoly would crumble. Of course, you would be waiving all warranties and would be personally assuming full liability if any changes were made outside of the John Deere ecosystem. We have to stop socialising the costs of running a business.
There are numerous videos about how farmers are having to learn to 'hack' their tractors so they can fix them. Its possible, but shouldn't be necessary. Its a shady business practice to force your customers to only be able to get their equipment fixed at YOUR dealers/mechanics.
I grew up on a farm, but decided that farming was not for me; so I became an Electrical Engineer. Not many farmers have the "hacker" aptitude. These are people who get up early, work hard, plan their day, work the land, and make the best decisions they can, with the data they have. They go to bed each night, weary - and sitting down at a computer and placing their "livelihood at risk" by hacking code they do not understand, is not very highly rated on the risk/consequence table.
they screw up one variable on the tractor, they either disable it, or cause something to break - or - they pay an inflated cost at the dealership and operate under warranty of the manufacturer.
Now, if a farmer can SEE a part that is apparently built with the same quality, is half the cost, and fits in their tractor at half the cost - that's another matter.
Remember these new machines are 200-500k+ in some cases and may be on lease. Even if they own it, they need parts and if the dealerships cut them off they could have a large expensive piece of scrap metal for the sake of a $1k part.
Secondarily, hacker culture is typically liberal leaning and city based, not farmers playing as a hobby.
In the right-to-repair/operate side of things, those with certain skills could make alternate 3D parts available to be machined. 3D scan stuff, use CAD to make part models to be shared.
Or reverse-engineer the computers in order to provide alternate operating systems.
If you don't have skills, but there are those who do, people could support them financially.
"Open hardware" is a path forward for this. Search the term for more information.
I believe some people are doing that with JD stuff, but don't quote me on that. I agree that the open source community can help, but there's many things which would be applicable - companies that are anti-consumer essentially. The entire economic system needs an overhaul, just like you stated.