John Deere accused of being full of manure with its right-to-repair promises US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has sent a letter to John May, CEO of agricultural equipment maker Deere & Company, questioning whether John Deere is living up to the promises it made to support people's right to repair. And if it's not fulfilling those promises, it may be failing in its obligations under America's Clean Air …
I wonder when the first case will come up, as clearly they WILL drag their feet as much as possible.
>>Someone is actually holding them to their empty promises.<<
As a United State citizen I assure you that Lizzie Warren (United States Senator) wouldn't give rat's patootie about this issue if it weren't for the fact it is a presidential election year when the democrats have to pretend to actually work for the benefit of the U.S. citizen and not solely to enrich themselves and remain in power like they usually do. But actually "hold them to their empty promises"? Nope. It'll all be forgotten after Nov. 5th and democrats. quickly return to business as usual seeking to enrich themselves at the taxpayer expense.
I hope something comes of this. I watched the videos from Louis Rossman and he seemed to be saying that he was almost tricked into backing down in his activities against JD by the Farming Beareau Federation and their proposed Memorandum of Understanding with JD.
It sounded almost like they colluded to kill off Louis' action by saying they had it in hand and to leave it with them, rather than letting him carry on with the senators or whoever. They made him lose his opportunity on that one.
Or something like that.
Well if JD held to their promises then the FBF would most likely have had it in hand. Instead, they're using weasel words and corporate tactics to ignore the spirit of the agreement, instead they'd rather argue that they're complying with the letter of the agreement and their eleventybillion lawyers will see you in court if you disagree.
Rossmann may be a bit whiny, but the message needs to be got out - if you let them, the corporations will enslave you.
Years back, I heard the saying "A libertarian is someone who believes that oppression is best left to the private sector". It doesn't seem funny anymore.
There should be a 'one and done' status for companies that try this. If you make a deal to stall legislation and renege on that deal then you lose any right to future deals.
Sadly we know that most of these deals are just the public face of the results of lobbyists and brown envelopes discouraging lawmakers from upsetting the gravytrain
I took my commerce elsewhere.
(Also, the “computer” they locked with proprietary algorithms is nothing but a PLC running glorified ladder logic. Guys are successfully rewiring their cars by disposing of those cost-cut “black box” brains and snapping in a home-built “speeduino”. I’d guess a small consortium or syndicate of farmers scrape up a little bit of bounty cash and set loose some hackers to sort out the John Deere mess, open-source the DIY alternative, and otherwise stop being a customer. Mazda has made heated seat resistors a subscription service, are you kidding me?! As if I don’t have a 12V cigarette lighter socket directly adjacent to the heater circuit. Also: just avoid Mazda, folks. Don’t be a loser!)
"By bypassing this piece of equipment and attempting to repair your machine on your own you've now invalidated any remaining John Deere warranties, and we also reserve the right to never service your machine again in the future"
Probably something like that.
"on your own you've now invalidated any remaining John Deere warranties"
Provided your machinery is still under warranty. That could be moot if you have a dead harvester and a big crop in the field that won't be worth anything by the time the factory tech can make it out to replace the fuel filter and reset the lock-out.
I'm seeing an opportunity here for somebody to come up with a plug-in brains box based on open-source hardware. I know some of the geegaws that are in modern harvesters are pretty schmik, but when push comes to shove, a farmer can do without them and run a Mk 1 brain in place of the automation. So you don't get every scrap of harvest, at least you got the bulk of it before the rains came and rotted everything. Maybe it's on the other end and you didn't get the most optimal seed placement, but did get the fields prepped and planted on time which is likely more important.
Multiple layers of shit:
- As with everything else these days, the huge amount of software in modern farming machinery means you'd need to replace a mammoth amount of functionality once you started throwing any part of it away.
- DMCA means you can be sued to cinders for even attempting to reverse engineering the hardware that remained.
Folks that are writing new firmware for trivial junk like home routers, old cellphones and heart pacemakers (really!) only avoid getting clobbered because the manufacturers are making more money selling new gear and don't bother with the crusty old stuff. John Deere is ornery enough to sue anyone for anything so you'd likely be looking at this happening outside the US and predominantly on older equipment. Even so I'd expect whatever a cease and desist is called in Australia or Serbia or whereever.
"ohn Deere is ornery enough to sue anyone for anything so you'd likely be looking at this happening outside the US and predominantly on older equipment. "
Sure, AliExpress. There's older JD equipment that has no spares and no service information. I recall one story where a GPS receiver died and there was no way to replace it with anything, official or not.
At the heart of the machine there will be an engine control box and that's not a dark art to replicate. Up a level may be sensors to drive feedback to the driver through displays and that's not super hard either. Where it can be messy is GPS based navigation and auto-drive features. It might be worth waving goodbye to those in exchange for not having to replace a few hundred thousand in working kit and only getting scrap value for the trade-in. KT3406E is a good channel on YT if you are into big diesel engines. He's a "good ol' boy" with a ton of skills that buys big diesel engines and rebuilds or parts them out. I find watching those vids relaxing. Over time I've wound up with an overall understanding of the things the engine control unit is doing. Once the engine is running (well) and the hydraulic pump is putting out pressure, you are on your way.
BMW, Volkswagon, Mazda, several other makers
Taking a cue from Tesla, these subscription services all phone home and cripple the car if they can't handshake periodically
Kockheed also do it - the F35 needs USA permission to fire up(*) and if they don't contatc the maintenance servers periodically, the aircraft will brick itself
(*) The UK and Israel have individual variations but the USA still holds master keys
In exchange, the AFBF agreed "to refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state 'Right to Repair' legislation" that goes beyond what's promised in the MOU.
AFBF should have known they'd get played, should have just done the 'Right to Repair' & then held JD and others to account.
The regulator should regulate, not do back room deals & shaft those they are meant to be acting on their behalf.
"The regulator should regulate, not do back room deals & shaft those they are meant to be acting on their behalf."
AFBF is a mutual owned by farmers to act as a lobbying body, not a regulator. In a UK context it's pretty much equivalent to NFU.
With a pretty extensive membership, AFBF ought to make a recommendation to its members to consider Deere's behaviour when they next purchase new plant. Deere only get away with it as long as buyers keep on paying, but at the moment US farm turkeys keep voting for Christmas.
"And so are all my neighbor's tractors. Not a single green tractor among them."
It's important to make serviceability part of the buying decision. Machinery doesn't break while just sitting in the shed. It breaks while it's being used so if you can't do without it, you better make sure you can get parts, service and documentation. You also want the manufacturer to use common parts for things such as bearings and not some off size super spec bearing that's weeks to get from the sole factory that makes it in Latvia.
Being able to make money off of your products going bad is a conflict of interest.
Idea 1: Government should require products to be warrantied from manufacturers, and no intentional failures added to products. Right to repair may come naturally after that, as it would save the company money from having to repair or replace products themselves.
Idea 2: They should be required to disclose typical repair/maintenance data. Like median/average number/cost/time/etc... of repairs/maintenance their products.
(Note: I'm not a farmer, and don't have 'John Deere' made equipment)
"Being able to make money off of your products going bad is a conflict of interest."
I've raised the anecdote before but my maths teacher in high school was a design engineer for Stott Gradall in the 1960s.
One of this projects was a gearbox for a new road grader - which resulted in him being eviscerated by management for making it "too reliable" and the gears inside it were deliberately despecced to lower grade steel (at higher cost) in order to ensure major service would be required every 3-4 years
He resigned and emigrated shortly afterwards. Stott Gradall ceased to exist before he retired
It's hardly the only case of doing stuff for short term profit (or "jobs protection" in the case of things like British shipyards) only to destroy the company
On a similar note, Ford and GM spent many years acquiring old cars from scrapyards and seeing what hadn't broken in order to despec the overspecified parts and ensure cars broken down on schedule
Conversely Toyota acquires old cars in order to see what's broken and needs toughening up along with what field modifications have been made with an eye to see if they're worth incorporating
Deere is playing the field several ways by controlling what breaks, who can fix it and where you can get the parts from. I really am surprised that regulators haven't stepped in (if not in the USA then in other jurisdictions)
My neighbour has been doing this all yesterday and today. No fancy electronics needed. He uses one of his decades-old David Brown tractors. It has to be decades-old because David Brown went out of business years ago, largely, it's thought, as a result of building tractors their customers couldn't wear out. One sees John Deere's point.
"You would think that the “self regulated, free market” (-> sarcasm) would take care of that?"
Many are looking at all of the features and promises of x% increase in harvest or x% decrease in something else and not "can I get this repaired in 24 hours or buy the parts I need to do it myself?"
Working in aerospace, I've had to look at probable faults and play the devils advocate as the company safety officer. That was in addition to my main job as head of avionics hardware. I did have some sole source parts, but I tried to limit that as much as possible and also buy enough spares since plenty of stuff gets deprecated all the time. Designs would trade off speed or precision for durability and tolerance to abuse. The only fuses in the system were for the ignition system, those were self-resetting poly fuses and ignition went to redundant systems once we starting doing in-air relights. There was no other system where protecting it wouldn't lead to loss of vehicle.
Farming is a business and farming equipment is a tax write off (either at scrapping or via depreciation)
As long as the cost-benefit favours Deere, farmers will keep buying the things
Deere is profiteering, but the US rural economy is so heavily protected from external competition that they can get away with it
Remember, the USA is a country that attempted to force a major customer (China) to keep buying pig feed (soybeans) when that customer was dealing with a major outbreak of African Swine Fever and had culled 75% of its entire pig herd - bankrupt farmers tend not to want to buy (preishable) food for animals that don't exist
The USA _could_ have swooped in as saviours by selling pork to China (a market 3 times larger than the US domestic one and which would have effortlessly soaked up all those unsoald american soybeans). Instead they pulled a flat out "Bad Guys" move by declaring a trade war which proceeded about as well as one might expect(*) and American exporters saw a beckoning door into a massive new market get slammed hard in their faces
(*) Even worse for Australia in their "grinning sidekick" guise
"Farming is a business and farming equipment is a tax write off (either at scrapping or via depreciation)"
If you have anything to write those expenses off against! You'd still have to qualify for a loan/pay interest or pay a bunch of money up front for equipment. If you don't have the money or good credit, tax deductions are a nothing-burger.
"...explain why American farmers continue to buy John Deere equipment."
It's not bad stuff and they are innovative when it comes to functionality. The can sell all of that with slick presentations and brochures. The down side is parts and service scarcity and the hostile attitude towards non-OEM supply of either. As long as the machinery is running, it's happiness all around.
I'm also not a farmer, but my brother is. One of his fellow farmers last year traded in two older combines for a new JD combine. Of course, the JD combine broke-down at the beginning of harvest and JD techs were unable to fix it. He had to borrow the two combines he traded in to finish his harvest.
The modern machinery by JD and other manufacturers do have some nice features for monitoring planting of crops and harvesting that can help with planting, pest control and harvesting. It is a really big plus if the equipment works. Delays in repair by even a few days can mean the difference between a profitable year and a heavy loss.
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