Farmers need a right to repair:
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has called upon farm equipment maker John Deere to comply with its obligations under the General Public License (GPL), which requires users of such software to share source code.
In a blog post published on Thursday, SFC director of compliance Denver Gingerich argues that farmers' ability to repair their tools is now in jeopardy because the makers of those tools have used GPL-covered software and have failed to live up to licensing commitments.
"Sadly, farm equipment manufacturers, who benefit immensely from the readily-available software that they can provide as part of the farming tools (tractors, combines, etc.) they sell to farmers, are not complying with the right to repair licenses of the software they have chosen to use in these farming tools," said Gingerich.
"As a result, farmers are cut off from their livelihood if the farm equipment manufacturer does not wish to repair their farming tools when they inevitably fail, even when the farmer could easily perform the repairs on their own, or with the help of someone else they know."
Gingerich singled out Moline, Illinois-based John Deere as a particularly egregious offender. He said that for years the SFC has attempted to work with John Deere to resolve the company's non-compliance, but the agricultural equipment maker has failed to cooperate.
"When Deere does reply (we have heard from others that their legitimate requests for source code have been met with silence), they have always failed to include the 'scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable,' per GPLv2," Gingerich told The Register.
"And even when we were already engaged with them, and asked for source for an additional product, it took more than 10 months for them to send us the first (again, incomplete) package, which makes their offer for source hollow."
[...] Facing multiple lawsuits from farmers, who now have the support of the Justice Department and the White House, John Deere in January struck a deal [PDF] with the American Farm Bureau Federation to provide farmers with greater access to the internal workings of company's equipment.
While repair advocates considered the deal a win, they remain cautious because the company struck a similar bargain in 2018 that proved insufficient – that deal did not provide access to tools for resetting security and immobilizer locks.
As the SFC sees it, the right to repair can be best served through John Deere's compliance with the GPL.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 21, @12:22AM (1 child)
Competition is one possible solution. But John Deere is alone in one respect. Only they have the "long green line", that is, end to end farming equipment. Farmers that turn to the competition have to buy tractors from one manufacturer, combines from another, and other implements from yet more manufacturers.
I have the impression that the mix has generally been better quality. Deere's engineering is spread a little thin to cover all that equipment, and consequently, a lot of their stuff is mediocre quality. For instance, the "Johnny Popper" tractors from the mid 1920s to circa 1960 feature 2 cylinder engines that run slow, and the 2 cylinders don't fire at even intervals. To have sufficient power with so few cylinders at such slow speeds, each cylinder has to be quite large. As a consequence they have highly uneven power outputs that tend to wear implements out faster. Johnny Poppers couldn't be used to drive some belts because the uneven power output would stretch and relax the belt so much it'd slap against itself. Yeah, there are fanatic agriculture antiquarians who swear by those tractors, but it would have been better to have more smaller cylinders and higher RPMs for a smoother running engine.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 21, @01:03AM
Another solution is to insert yourself into the legal workflow -- hiring an attorney to ask for compliance within a set timeframe, then sending cease-and-desist letters, then filing a court case. You'd think that would move it higher on their priorities (or at least timeline) a little.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday March 21, @12:48AM (4 children)
It seems like this kind of hubris will eventually catch up to them. I remember when anybody rural used to wear a Deere cap. People love their old school JD equipment. It was a rural icon. Already you kind of don't see that as much. It's not like they've got a lock on the concepts. It's just that they've got an entrenched dealer network. They almost certainly thought they were a fixture and could get away with "killing a man on 5th avenue in broad daylight". That's the kind of mentality that makes somebody think they can ship proprietary software based on GPL'd code too. It's going to take time, but this will catch up to them. If I owned their stock, I'd sell it; I don't know how it's been doing, let's check...
...symbol lookup, $DE. Hmm, jumped up high in 2020 and continues to outperform the SP 500. I stand by what I say though--over-valued unless they change their ways. Maybe there are people on Wall Street who love the fact that everybody hates them and can't seem to quit them--they call it "having a moat", but there isn't any moat that can't be breached, and when the castle collapses it does so with a thud and doesn't get rebuilt.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday March 21, @12:59AM
If you have morals and you have John Deere stock, sell it. But if you have no morals and you're looking for a good return on your investment, keep your John Deere shares.
John Deere has all the stars aligned: they hold their customers by the balls, they have lobbyists working hard in Washington to kill right-to-repair bills in all the states where such bills are introduced. And when that doesn't work, they have enough elected officials on the payroll to poison the bills that make it through anyway. Plus, they virtually bought the Farm Bureau.
I don't see them being toppled by right-to-repair activists or open-source enthusiasts anytime soon. They have too much clout and money. John Deere has become a sort of Google or Microsoft of the agricultural world: they're monopolistic, they've gotten way too big and they've corrupted their way to untouchability.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 21, @01:00AM (2 children)
Lock-in and treating your customers like bonded laborers improves income for a *very* long time before it becomes enough of a liability to affect the bottom line. Consider Microsoft, Monsanto, a few others I'm sure I'm missing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday March 21, @02:10AM (1 child)
Monsanto [fool.com] is an intersting story. I suppose it depends on when you bought and sold. The Monsanto story ends when it got acquired by Bayer, all cash. Ordinarily you'd feel secure owning such a large company, being able to take gains at your leisure. An all-cash tender offer sucks because it forces you to accept gains or losses at a time not of your choosing, so buying Monsanto wasn't necessarily going to put you on the road to riches the past 10 years. You would certainly have done better in any number of other big names that aren't so slimy.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21, @04:09PM
I hope they paid it all with pennies
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21, @02:43AM (7 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday March 21, @02:45AM (6 children)
Yeah, likely to be "Try and make me."
Unfortunate that the software and its associated hardware isn't a modular unit that you can unplug, replace with something more user-friendly, and chuck the original into a ditch.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday March 21, @05:06AM (5 children)
Yeah, or maybe they'll release partial, or just plain wrong code. I wonder if there will be an investigation where someone will download the code from a machine and compare it to JD's official release (if there ever is one).
For real? It's not in a computer module of some kind? Most cars' computers are, although of course there may be many computers distributed and interconnected by a CAN bus.
Recently and finally a manufacturer makes some programmers for cars that allow you to download the car's computer's code, edit as needed, and re-upload.
There was a story a few years ago about Ukrainian farmers who have JD crap who reverse-engineered the machine computers and stopped them from bricking themselves when "unofficial" repairs were done.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware [vice.com]
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/john-deere-tractor-hacks-ukrainian/ [digitaltrends.com]
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3661434/remote-bricking-of-ukrainian-tractors-raises-agriculture-security-concerns.html [csoonline.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday March 21, @06:20AM (4 children)
Yeah, what I was thinking is that maybe you can pull the main module, but it's probably got tentacles everywhere that will promptly stop working. You'd think for half a million bucks there'd be enough profit that JD wouldn't need to pull such crap.
https://www.farmtender.com.au/articles/john-deere-tractors-prices [farmtender.com.au]
(AU$ but close enough to US$ prices, and the only convenient list I tripped over.)
Heard of farmers in Far Countries who were hacking their JDs to make them behave in a more civilized fashion, and that some American farmers are sharing homegrown replacement code. Likely be a good market for complete replacement for the entire octopus, if someone can figure it out.
Which automaker is this paragon of open source? I drive a 1991 so I never hear about these adventures. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday March 21, @06:53AM (1 child)
Sorry for causing confusion through brevity. No automaker that I know of shares code. What I was trying to say in cryptic (that's a language you know! :) was that an aftermarket manufacturer makes an electronic interface that allows you to connect a "smartphone" or PC to a car's OBD-II port and do all kinds of things.
OBD-II was supposed to be a standard, and some data- running sensor data, some diagnostic data and error codes, are pseudo-standard, but then each vehicle manufacturer did their own thing with items like extended sensor and other internal calculation algorithm running values, error codes, etc., but also the specific mechanism of downloading / uploading the many parameters, the OS, and other firmware.
It's been fairly easy to read running sensor and other data values, and error codes, from pretty much any OBD-II vehicle with an inexpensive adapter. Most are based on an ELM327 [wikipedia.org] chip, however many of them are fakes and don't work correctly. Sigh.
But that's just diagnostic data. For actual programming- parameters, processing algorithms, OS itself, it's another story. For many years almost all vehicles have been very easy to read out and program using sub-$100 adapters. Just my luck in life, GM are the exception. There were several interfaces available, some in the many hundreds of dollars, up to $2K.
Sometime in the last few years at least two companies started making them in the $60-120 range that will do GM vehicles. Yay! All things come to those who wait, or something like that.
Pre-OBD-II, IE, older than 1996-ish, it's a very different story, and totally depends on the brand, year, engine, etc.
I have some older pre-1996 GM vehicles, and the computerized ones use an actual EPROM chip that I pull, read, edit parameters, erase the (or another spare) EPROM, burn, and get a much better running vehicle.
I think Fords also use an EPROM, not sure about other makes. What make is your 1991?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday March 27, @01:28AM
1991 is a Ford F350. Big-ass king cab dually, because when I was looking for a heavy-duty tow vehicle, the criteria were 1) Ford and 2) not rode hard and put away wet, and 3) 1997 or before, because newer don't suit me for a whole host of reasons, not least that they make my eyes bleed. And this one jumped up at a good price and said BUY ME. 260k miles, 7 owners (always commercial), all stock, and still drives like a new truck. Has been rebuilt end to end, so... well, it IS a new truck. :)
Funny story: It came with an extra-tall rack. I'm getting gas in Three Forks, Montana, and the guy at the next pump looks over and says, "I'll bet you bought that truck in California." I allow as how that was so, and he says, "I built that rack." -- Turns out it's a custom job for the studios, tall enough that it won't bump their precious equipment. Microscopic world!!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday March 21, @07:11AM (1 child)
I meant to add: there are many aftermarket engine control system kits available, including full fuel injection systems. Some use proprietary original computer designs, but some simply use major manufacturer's engine computers. I've seen some that use GM computers.
There are many aftermarket gizmos that boost power / tweak some parameters but don't give you programmability- just an in/out switch, or maybe several levels- usually performance boosting.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 21, @07:47AM
Have heard about those, only because at some point I tripped over a debate about their various benefits. But way out of my bailiwick!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Tuesday March 21, @06:29AM (8 children)
Comply with the license, or stop stealing code, insists copyright law. That'd be a much more accurate title.
It is not SFC which is in the wrong and going on with unreasonable behavior, it is John Deere which has been in willful violation of copyright law and foisting stolen code onto their customers while wrongly claiming that it is their own. It is not their own. It is theirs under license and that license has requirements stated up front which John Deere must be willing to comply wit has a prerequisite to using that particular code.
Bad titles like the one at the top of the thread here just make it that much harder to get large businesses to take copyright law as seriously for themselves as they take it against the average citizen.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday March 21, @06:57AM (7 children)
I don't know much about the legal proceedings, but could JD release the open source they're using, but keep some code private, saying it's their added code?
(Score: 2, Informative) by SteamPunkLolcat on Tuesday March 21, @10:06AM
No, not if it is changes to code under the GPL.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday March 21, @11:23AM (4 children)
I don't know much about the legal proceedings, but could JD release the open source they're using, but keep some code private, saying it's their added code?
No. They have agreed to the license which stipulates that IF they make changes (including additions) to the code, AND they choose to redistribute them, THEN they license mandates that the changes (including additions) are to be made available under the same license as the original material. They made their choice, now they have to fulfill copyright law and live up to the license they agreed to when they copied, modified, and redistributed the code under license. It's not a complicated matter nor a confusing license. Furthermore it has been well tested in court like the rest of copyright law.
What is confusing is the silence of the Linux Foundation on this. That might have something to do with M$, and several of its unindicted co-conspirators, being members and on the board. The head of the LF has expressed no interest in advancing or even protecting Linux. Oh, and his wife is a microsofter too.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RS3 on Tuesday March 21, @05:21PM
Thanks, all, for the answers. I read TFS and skimmed TFA, but my concern is: obviously JD has become a greed-driven unethical profit-taking piece of trash of a company. I doubt they care about GPL, SFC, Linux, lawyers, justice dept., et al. I/we don't have all the details, nor the time / patience to read through the steaming pile. From what we know, it seems that JD is good at not complying, stalling, negotiating, stalling some more, on and on.
They don't seem to care about Justice Dept. either. Stall long enough, lawyers make big $, and elections happen and everything eventually resets.
20+ years ago many states sued MS. The whole thing dragged out for years, and eventually MS won by attrition. They never gave up anything. They weaseled and squirmed and did their best to save face / PR, but they didn't have to as there's no competition. They put on a huge attention-grabbing dog-and-pony show about IE, making IE the focus, which drew everyone away from the real problems. They didn't give a rat's crap about IE- total smokescreen, and it worked.
I can hear it now: "John Deere: too big to fail! Too critical to FOOD production." Kinda important, no? JD becomes untouchable. Make a public spanking show, but don't actually hurt them. Make everyone think something's being done, just like with MS. It's competition gone too far.
So my real question is: who can and will do what to JD in this case?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday March 27, @01:34AM (2 children)
Is HOW the code is redistributed relevant under the GPL?
Because I'm wondering if there's a legal difference (or if lawyers could convincingly argue a legal difference) between embedded code that "no one will ever see" in a module that "still belongs to us, therefore is not per se distributed" .... and a naked program you could carry off on a disk.
Interesting observations on the LF :/
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday March 27, @11:54PM (1 child)
If the GPLed code is "linked" to other code, then that other code, if distributed, has to be made availabls as GPLed source code.
Those are the licence terms.
There can be arguments about what "linked" means. But linking with a traditional link editor surely counts.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 28, @12:49AM
You would think. But I'm thinking about contrary legal arguments, and why no one on the GPL side has gone after them. Surely someone has consulted a lawyer??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stormreaver on Tuesday March 21, @02:23PM
Copyright is a tangled web of ifs, ands, buts, and judge/jury emotional states. But in general, if your added code requires interacting with GPL code, then your code is probably a derivative of the GPL code and therefore must be published as such. If your added code runs alongside the GPL code, but does not require the GPL code in order to function, then it's probably not a derivative. There are always corner cases, etc., but that's the general idea.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Tuesday March 21, @11:44AM (2 children)
Is it possible to go back and start using simple, "analog" equipment to farm? Yes it is [youtube.com], but your yields will definitely be lower.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday March 21, @05:28PM (1 child)
For anyone who doesn't fully understand the Amish and what they actually believe and do, this whole thing is an example of why they seem to shun technology. It's mostly about: they don't want to be dependent on big companies, big government, "the English" (everyone who is not Amish).
You'll see them working and talking on a cell phone. I've passed their farms where there are no power wires going to their homes or barns, but there will be solar panels. Kind of a gray area- I'm not sure what they're powering- maybe cell phone charging? Point is, they're not dependent on it for life's essentials.
To answer your question: horses, mules, water, solar, wind power. And children- lots of strong children, who, from what I've seen, are as happy as any anywhere.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Monday March 27, @01:47AM
It's the spiritual disconnection from "the world" that's important, more than the technology. And what's acceptable is all over the place, from Schwartzentruber Amish who live like it's 1830 and don't even use buttons on their clothes (but might use a diesel engine to power a table saw), to Beachy Amish who live in beautiful modern houses with their own power sources, and have nothing against using cell phones for business.
You can get the yield just as high as with modern equipment... provided you have enough fertilizer, and enough strong backs to do the same work in a timely manner. If you gotta pay and house that many farmhands, well, bushel for bushel, tractors and combines are cheaper. China still grows rice with hand labor.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.