Farmers throughout America's heartland are resorting to illegal measures to be able to successfully fix their own equipment. They are hacking their equipment with firmware that comes from Eastern Europe to avoid the ridiculous locks that John Deere puts on their equipment. Basically, John Deere forces farmers to sign a lisencing agreement that forbids nearly all repair and/or modification to their farming equipment and it prevents farmers from suing for "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment... arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software." Now, when a farmer's tractor breaks down and he buys a part to fix it, he may be able to physically install it, but he will not be able to legally obtain or use John Deere software to activate the replacement part, so he has to take the tractor to a dealership, possibly 100+ miles away, just to have a John Deere technician activate it with John Deere software. This is obviously ridiculous and not feasible for many farmers to do and it is why they are resorting to illegal measures. There are, however, people trying to fight against John Deere to make it easier for the farmer. Several politicians are currently joining with regular farmers and fighting back against John Deere and this "right to repair" movement also extends over to phone repairers and Apple because they also restrict people from repairing their things.
Would you feel bad about hacking your farming equipment to quickly and easily repair your equipment?
Absolutely not. John Deere is making farming unsustainable for many farmers because of how hard they make it to repair equipment.
Should John Deere be legally forced to release all of their tractor software for anybody to use and access?
They definitely should.
Replies
Good topc choice and summary. Be sure to capitalize key words in your title and include a hyperlink to your story. Also, with only one page of comments, you should reply to everyone.
There would be a voice in my mind telling me not to because of the possible consequences, but I would still want to repair my equipment on my own and would still do it anyway. What John Deere is doing is super inconvenient for the farmer and they should be able to repair their own stuff. I agree that John Deere should get rid of their contract restrictions to let the farmer modify their equipement as they please.
I don't think I would, after all a company should NOT be able to monopolize on repairs to my device, I bought it after all, what gives them the right to suck more money out of me? They should release it, and to make up for the losses they could easily make their tractors and other equipment cost a bit more.
No i would not because if it cost a lot of money to repair a peice of equiptment that makes you money and feeds your family I wouldnt feel bad if it is going to a good cause. legally they can do whatever they want and i could care less if they released it but if i where a farmer id robably want to have that software.
I dont think I would feel bad about hacking my farm equipment, after all it is my own personal equipment. Having to wait a long time for your equipment to be repaired really can make a farmer mad. Lets say your planter breaks down while your planting, you're not going to want to wait forever for you planter to be fixed. You are going to want to get back to planting as soon as possible.
Yes for many farmers and especially during parts of the year like planting and fertilizing where they are very pressed for time, they can't wait to take their equipment to some place that might be really far away.
I would personally not feel bad about hacking my own farming equipment. I think that is a right because you own the equipment. You are allowed to do whatever you would like with whatever you purchase. I disagree however that John Deere should release their software because this can cause them to lose a lot of money. They can lose money by more competition and people can try and fix their own problems.
Yes they are losing a lot of money also by refusing to let normal farmers access the software.
That is exactly what I was thinking. If you own the equipment, you have the right to do whatever you want to it. John Deere is going to be losing a lot of money, causing there revenue to go down. And we all know that you want to keep your revenue higher.