John Deere Promises to Let Farmers Repair Their Own Equipment.
John Deere promises to let farmers repair their own equipment.:
John Deere, makers of farm machinery and vehicles, applies copyright law to make it illegal to repair your own equipment. After years of debate, anger and hacking, the company now promises to allow users to do so without voiding warranties or facing the prospect of legal action.
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and Deere & Co. signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Sunday. "It addresses a long-running issue for farmers and ranchers when it comes to accessing tools, information and resources, while protecting John Deere's intellectual property rights and ensuring equipment safety," AFBF President Zippy Duvall said. Under the agreement, equipment owners and independent technicians will not be allowed to "divulge trade secrets" or "override safety features or emissions controls or to adjust Agricultural Equipment power levels."
John Deere Signs Right to Repair Agreement
John Deere signs right to repair agreement:
In what looks like a victory for farmers in the United States, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) has struck a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with equipment vendor John Deere regarding the repairability of its machines.
As farming has become more technology-driven, Deere has increasingly injected software into its products with all of its tractors and harvesters now including an autopilot feature as standard.
Deere also estimates that software fees will make up 10 percent of the company's revenues by the end of the decade, with Bernstein analysts pegging the average gross margin for farming software at 85 percent, compared to 25 percent for equipment sales.
Just like other commercial software vendors, however, Deere exercises close control and restricts what can be done with its products. This led farm labor advocacy groups to file a complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission last year, claiming that Deere unlawfully refused to provide the software and technical data necessary to repair its machinery.
"Deere is the dominant force in the $68 billion US agricultural equipment market, controlling over 50 per cent of the market for large tractors and combines," said Fairmark Partners, the groups' attorneys, in a preface to the complaint [PDF].
"For many farmers and ranchers, they effectively have no choice but to purchase their equipment from Deere. Not satisfied with dominating just the market for equipment, Deere has sought to leverage its power in that market to monopolize the market for repairs of that equipment, to the detriment of farmers, ranchers, and independent repair providers."
At the time, the company told The Register: "John Deere supports a customer's right to safely maintain, diagnose, and repair their own equipment. To facilitate this, Deere provides the tools, parts, information guides, training videos and manuals needed for farmers to work on their machines, including remote access for technicians to provide long-distance support.
"John Deere does not support the right to modify embedded software due to the risks associated with the safe operation of equipment, emissions compliance, and engine performance. We remain committed to providing innovative solutions that support our customers' needs."
The MoU, which can be read here [PDF], was signed yesterday at the 2023 AFBF Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and seems to be a commitment by Deere to improve farmers' access and choice when it comes to repairs.
[...] While the MoU concedes that it is "a voluntary private sector commitment to outcomes rather than legislative or regulatory measures" and makes reference to access "per subscription or sale," we did not see this one coming.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 10, @12:44PM (11 children)
There's at least one clause of the agreement that I don't like. Key part of sentence bolded below:
So, Deere says, "Alright, we'll allow you to work on your own equipment, but you cannot continue the fight for right to repair!" Meaning, Deere can work behind the scenes to undermine right to repair, but AFBF can't do similar, but opposing, work.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday January 10, @02:54PM
I figured there had to be a poison pill - Deere has worked too hard for too long to screw over farmers to suddenly just roll over.
On the bright side it sounds like the agreement only binds the AFBF at the federal level. Hopefully their "encouragement" of state-level organizations to play ball as well will be... unmotivated. I'm picturing Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. "stop. no. come back": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ZD3_ppcPE [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday January 10, @06:41PM (5 children)
That was the reason for the agreement in the first place. They can always change the contract, changing the law, once written, is hard to change.
But the law will be coming with or without John Deere.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday January 10, @10:40PM (4 children)
It sounds like Deere are trying to head off the new Right to Repair laws.
I'm not a lawyer, but I wonder: if they get people to sign the contract, but then Congress passes Right to Repair, will the contract remain in effect, or does the new law nullify the contract?
(Score: 3, Informative) by owl on Wednesday January 11, @04:27PM (1 child)
Ultimately that would be up to a court to decide, but most likely outcome would be that court choosing to decide that newer legislation overrides terms in older contracts.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 11, @05:53PM
Hopefully! But then there might be appeals? Dragging it on and on?
Hopefully Congress will write it to say that any previous agreements or contracts to the contrary are null and void.
Somewhere way back in school I remember a teacher saying that the Supreme Court is the ultimate decider, but I don't know enough political science to know, and we've all seen major ups and downs in the process. Sometimes I think Congress should be, because they're supposedly our representatives. IIRC theoretically you can appeal a SCOTUS decision to be heard in Congress. But even with Congress' laws and decisions you have Federal versus States Rights.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday January 11, @06:06PM (1 child)
In the US, law ALWAYS trumps a contract.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 11, @06:53PM
Thanks, good to know. I wasn't sure if "grandfathering" came into play, at least sometimes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Tuesday January 10, @08:02PM (1 child)
Dissolve old farm bureau, start new one. Contract was with old one, not new one. This is not as crazy as it sounds. Our local grange broke away from the parent grange organization. I think it was over the GMO seed issue or something. For a while, they were not allowed to call themselves "grange" or say "grange hall". It was referred to as the "guild" and the "guild hall". I don't know if they got back together, or if people are just informally violating that because recently I've started to hear them say "grange" on the radio again. Of course this is just a local grange, but I don't see why it can't scale. It's the same thing as when some corporation spins off the division that created a superfund site, bankrupts it and moves on unscathed. If they can pull those kinds of shenanigans, why can't we?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday January 10, @11:54PM
If you want to go down the rabbit-hole of California's grange dispute, here's a really long read [mendovoice.com].
Long story short, the "guild hall" has gone back to being called a "grange hall" because the national grange organization beat the guild in court, ruling that the local factions had no rights to the halls. The guild doesn't even have a web site any more, absolute defeat but I don't think this should be too discouraging. The guild as an organization was heavily dependent on the halls and the name. That might not be the case for other organizations. If your organization relies on something more portable, such as a stream of dues, then it seems like breaking away would be easier.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday January 11, @04:44AM (1 child)
So, Deere says, "Alright, we'll allow you to work on your own equipment, but you cannot continue the fight for right to repair!" Meaning, Deere can work behind the scenes to undermine right to repair, but AFBF can't do similar, but opposing, work.
The obligatory Louis Rossmann video on the topic, John Deere memo: Farmers have NOT won, but that won't stop the news from pretending they did [odysee.com], includes an interview with a professional knowledgeable about farm equipment.
From the video, it is apparent that memorandum is basically a means to forestall real access to the hardware, software, and replacement parts and block further legislative action while the company will continue to maneuver behind the scenes to further ban repair at the legislative level: The memorandum apparently has the usual carve outs for "emissions", "safety" controls, copyright, etc. which John Deere has already been using all along against farmers to prevent access to the equipment which they paid for and ostensibly own. These are about the same carve outs which were used to gut the New York bill [soylentnews.org] which was recently signed into law.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11, @06:16AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-RgOUT3zeo [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Tuesday January 10, @04:57PM (4 children)
I recognize that this issue is about business, and manufacturers trying to force their lucrative razor/razor blade business model on their customers.
Still, my long career in software engineering gives me some sympathy for the manufacturers. When I started in the business, we would give the customers the software on installation media like a DVD, and the customer took it from there. They would choose their own hardware and install, configure, and operate the software for themselves. It was a nightmare for us, because we had to support the software, and we would never know what bizarre misconfiguration the customers had come up with, or what screwy hardware they had introduced, or what other crazy software they were trying to run on the same box. So, we switched to an appliance model, where we would supply the hardware with the software pre-installed and the customer would just use a settings menu and an upgrade button to maintain the software. And it was much better. But we would still have to deal with crazy configurations, as well as making new versions of the software run on old hardware that we had shipped years ago. So, we switched to a software as a service model, where we manage all that stuff ourselves, and the customer just uses the service. It is so much easier. Well, that part of the job is easier, anyway.
My point is that although there are often nefarious business reasons for a manufacturer wanting to keep everything locked down and not user serviceable, there are also sometimes legitimate technical reasons.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bloodnok on Tuesday January 10, @06:50PM
While I can agree with that, and have no problem with a manufacturer voiding a user's warranty for doing dumb things, I do have a problem with them taking legal action against their customers. That is just plain evil, as is telling their customers that they can't lobby to improve their lives.
Fuck them. In fact, fuck them with a farming implement.
__
The Major
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday January 10, @08:15PM (1 child)
I get this. I used to do tech support at an ISP and we had a list of supported operating systems and web browsers. Web browsers not installed by us were not supported. It was almost all Windows with Netscape or IE, and then Netscape was eventually dropped. There was limited Mac and NT support. There was no support for say, Linux, FreeBSD, Opera on a Mac or an e-mail client we didn't send them.
It's perfectly legit to not support configurations you didn't ship, as your techs would have to expand their knowledge base in ways that would require a lot of hours, provide little benefit in return, and possibly damage other vendor's software installations.
What Deere and other vendors are doing though, seems more like if we had sued customers for connecting with 3rd party clients. We wouldn't dream of doing that. BTW, the policy if somebody called with an unsupported configuration was to give them network details--IP of our DNS servers, names of mail servers, etc. and politely explain to them that they were on their own, or if it seemed like they might be looking for more there were a few cases where we might up-sell them to our business development group which presumably offered more advanced consulting services--I think I might have made a few such referrals but never got a commission.
In short, there's a right way and wrong way to handle unsupported configurations and I think the ol' ISP did it right and Deere is doing it wrong. There was a time when it seemed like a Deere cap was right up there with the American flag as an expression of what we were all about. How much good will are they squandering here? Ultimately, I hope the free market works on them and then they can Crimea river all the way to Russia where they belong.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday January 11, @03:02PM
Exactly this. Deere has gone right past limited support to active sabotage. They seem unable to grasp the concept that once they sell something, it is no longer theirs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday January 10, @11:02PM
You and everyone are making great points here. Not to quibble nor detract from your described situation, but this is machine control software, not a generic OS running this and that, on a wide variety of sometimes crazy configurations, software that replaces important .dlls, etc.
I dabble in the automobile / machine world, including getting into tuning PCM (car's computer). It's more about trying to refine all the compromises that go into the normal OEM engineering process. Before computerized cars, I did a bit of tuning, mild "hot-rodding", etc. I got more power, and significant MPG improvement. Even significantly lower emissions in cases where the car had to be tested.
What really triggered all of this was several years ago, much like someone replacing an iPhone screen, the Deere POS would "brick" itself when someone did a fairly mundane repair. I don't remember all the details, but an official Deere technician would have to run some kind of utility that would un-brick the tractor. Besides the obvious egregiousness of that, official Deere technicians were very expensive, and some farmers lived hundreds of miles from an official Deere service center. Sometimes they could get a Deere tech. on site, but at huge cost, and sometimes months waiting (while crops spoiled and were total loss).
Worse, IMHO, this is about our FOOD production, not something we could live without.
I think the analogy I would make: if your software would brick the customer's computer because they plugged in a new printer, or changed to a different brand mouse, or something that mundane. Point is, Deere's behavior in this thing is unprecedented and way over the top egregious. I and many others would be very happy to see them lose all customers and go out of business (oh wishing the capitalist system worked that well...).