Deere & Co won't give out software and data needed for repairs, watchdog told Twelve farm labor, advocacy, and repair groups filed a complaint last week with the US Federal Trade Commission claiming that agricultural equipment maker Deere & Company has unlawfully refused to provide the software and technical data necessary to repair its machinery. The groups include National Farmers Union, Iowa Farmers …
It's not much different than broadband access.
Theoretically I have 5 different companies to choose from... but the truth is I call up 4 of them and "they don't service my area"
Deere, Case, IH, and others don't overlap with their "service territories" - "you're not in our service territory, call Deere" - which is about as collusive as it gets.
Deere, Case, IH, and others don't overlap with their "service territories" - "you're not in our service territory, call Deere" - which is about as collusive as it gets.
It is a case of "do-what-I-say but not do-what-I-do". It is one thing when the US Government "encourages" free market but it is another when territories are "carved up" and territorial "boundaries" are agreed among vendors "in confidential".
At least, with Mafia organization everyone on the street knows which corner of the street is "owned" by which family.
When we were farming in 1970s we had these companies:
John Deere
Oliver
Minneapolis-Moline
Ford
International
Case
Massey-Ferguson
David Brown
Deutz
Cockshutt
Allis Chalmers
Versatile
New Holland
And a few others I can't remember.
Today JD probably has well over 50% of the market with CaseIH and AGCO fighting over the rest with Mahindra and Kubota lapping in the tiny tractor segment.
Think about it. And even back then you very, VERY seldom saw more than two brands for sale in any town.
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OK. So buy Case - or someone else. If enough do it JD will change - or go bust.
You’re presuming that there is a CaseIH dealer within 200miles of them, or that they can get dealer support/parts in a sensible time (not that a local JD dealer will necessarily be any quicker).
When they describe Deere as a monopoly, they’re not kidding - the big boys divvy up territories so that they don’t compete or step on each other’s toes. Completely illegal cartel behaviour - if the anti trust boys could be bothered to investigate.
Construction equipment is exactly the same - when you see the CEOs of Case, Cat and Deere disappear into a private room together at the AEM Conference, it’s not for a friendly game of poker. They’re agreeing their no-compete territories.
What are the barriers to entry in this market ? It seems like "found suitcase full of money" for the right entrepreneur to move in and take market share by providing a product and terms - openness - that customers would want. There is no need to try to take every dollar that needs to be spent. As they say in the garment district, you can make money at the high end and at the low end.
No, the Standard Oil approach. Then after that, the IBM approach. Then ...
Standard Oil is the reference text on how to do it - cross subsidising so you can undercut any competitor in any territory you choose to target, until they go out of business. Then up your prices to suit the new local monopoly to raise the cash to do the same thing in the next area.
The barriers are even higher than becoming a successful car manufacturer.
You're building a large industrial machine that goes into the hands of someone that'll give it a rough supper makin' a livin' and you'll also need to service it on a moment's notice so said customer doesn't go bankrupt.
So not only do your machines need to be nearly bulletproof to start with, but you also need a big dealer & service network.
That said, a lot of the smaller farmers go to Kubota and others, but the larger farmers don't have a choice... no one else makes the big machines they need.
First problem: It's big, complicated, specialized equipment. The other manufacturers have been building that for decades. You have been building it for never. It takes a lot of knowledge to build that properly. You will need to design the stuff, get a manufacturing capacity, and then test it a lot. That is not cheap. It's not like the Framework laptop, where they just had to design the enclosure and boards with standard components used by twenty other manufacturers; you're looking at a far more complex business and they can build in bulk and you can't yet. Where do I go to get someone to put up millions for that, especially considering that this was only the first problem.
Second problem: You have to sell and support this everywhere. You may start in one place, but even if you do, you have to be able to sell the equipment to the farmers who want to buy it. That requires people who can demonstrate its benefits, answer questions, and get it out there. When you've done that, you have to support them. You have to have repair parts for sale, repair techs for those who don't want to do it themselves, people to diagnose problems at short notice. It only takes a few failures for farmers to start telling their friends that your company talks about the right to repair because you don't bother having any repair services, and then fewer people will buy.
Third problem: Scaling is hard. If you can build one big farm machine, you still don't have plans for all the other big farm machines that are in demand. I can't tell you which ones you need, but I do know there's more than one of them. Now you have to start doing all the sales and support work you just figured out in lots of places. Keep in mind that even the large, established players don't do that everywhere, and you can see that it's an uphill climb to have a company with the same opportunity to sell as they have.
Fourth problem: They don't want you to win. Up to now, I've only pointed out the problems you have running your company without them even noticing. Let's say you managed that. You can design, manufacture, sell, and support lots of nice equipment. The companies that currently make a lot of profit selling competitive equipment don't want that to keep going. They have more money than you do. They may decide it's time to prevent you from succeeding. They could give your local partners incentives to stop selling and supporting your stuff and switch to theirs. They could cut the prices on theirs, knowing that they can make it back by charging for repairs and you can't (yes, it's worse for the farmers who buy from them in the long run, but not everyone knows that). They can get some of your stuff and research the problems with it, then use that to convince people not to buy. If you're luckier, they come to you and offer just to buy your company. You get money and stop being in their way.
It's not impossible to do, but you need a lot of resources, including time, money, and effort to pull it off. The rich investors don't particularly want to pick a fight with rich companies when they could fund something with fewer enemies. Not many people want to run that company either, knowing that they have to work really hard just to be one of the pack.
>>Nationalising never solves anything.
Except, of course, for the East Coast Main Line in the UK. Every time 'private industry' has run it, it fails to make a profit; the Govt. takes it back, turns it around and then sells it back to their chums again. Rinse and repeat.
Oh and nationalising the railways back in the 30s did solve loads of problems, mostly with connecting services and standards... but that doesn't count does it?
The ECML probably isn't a great example. The government returns it to profitability by the simple means of not investing any money in it. Not that any of the private owners have made a stunning job of running it, as you point out.
The railways weren't nationalised in the thirties - in 1923 all the small fragmented railway companies were merged into four regional entities - the Southern Railway, the London Midland Scottish Railway, the London North Eastern Railway and the Great Western Railway (which already existed, it just absorbed the smaller companies in its geographical area). These companies didn't specifically compete with each other (except LMS & LNER on England to Scotland routes), but they were private companies with shareholders and a desire to make profits.
Nationalisation happened in 1948, out of necessity, essentially. World War 2 had taken a serious toll on all four companies, and all were in effect bankrupt. Many road haulage companies were nationalised at the same time, under the auspices of the British Transport Commission. The newly formed British Railways was moderately successful, but again fell victim to a lack of long term investment, and a general political consensus (plus some personal vested interests) that the future lay in road transport rather than rail.
An Amana fridge,
no circuit diagram available,
service costs $150 travel $100/hour,
guy maybe isolates fault $250,
phones repair will cost an extra $400,
fault is obvious,
remove faulty part, test with meter - yes faulty - 5 minutes,
Google part - cheapest $55 delivered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQPkfS2Q84
I don't mind paying for professional repair,
but won't pay for having an extra hole ripped
Hah - it's not just them - I ended up buying an expensive piece of software to reset the service indicator on my Audi - as it's the ONLY way short of going to the dealer - you can get the oil changed anywhere, reset the oil interval through the user panel - BUT you can't reset the service indicator without a 3rd party tool....the onboard computer even stores the serial number of the BATTERY...
It's so bad that the stupid thing has been at the dealer for 2 months now as it's showing an error they can't clear...mechanically they can't find anything wrong - but the ecm says there's a problem so there obviously must be...
BMW led the way with that one. But the behaviour you describe is illegal in Europe (you don't say where you are) after the EU removed the block exemption from car manufacturers that allowed them an exemption to various competition rules. Now it is illegal to have tied dealers, exclusive areas, and a raft of other stuff they used to do - and it's illegal to restrict servicing to its own dealer network in the way you describe.
A friend of mine used to work for the local dealer of a well known British off-road icon. I recall him telling me that the third party diagnostics computer, while being a fraction of the price, was way better than the manufacturer's official one.
"on my Audi - ......................stupid thing has been at the dealer for 2 months now as it's showing an error they can't clear............. but the ecm says there's a problem so there obviously must be..."
Don't need any special software or tools - the fault is written on the boot lid :-)
Make both last for at most 15 years. This forces companies to look after their customers extremely well, lest they later pay someone good money to add decent long term support to their old products. Innovation would still continue at the pace it does today, just without all the bullshit. Since it’s my tax money which goes towards funding these asshats in the first place, why shouldn’t everything end up public domain within a somewhat useful timeframe?
At least in this case, it won't help. Copyright is 15 years. This means that, should you get a copy of the service manual, by 2030 it won't be illegal to have it. If you had a copy of the manual now, it would be illegal, but would that really stop you? I'm guessing not. The problem is that you can't get a copy of the manual right now. Copyright shortening doesn't help.
You've also shortened patents (though from 20 to 15 years so not as much). This should help with the parts themselves, right? After 15 years, it's legal to make generic versions of their inventions. If you don't have the designs for those parts, however, you may not be able to manufacture replacements. Most of them aren't available because they weren't patented in the first place (parts that aren't inventive don't get patented). Even for those where you have the designs or can create your own, the problem is that the system won't accept them. The software (for which you don't have the source) has ways to check for valid parts by using a cryptographic key (which you don't have) or by requiring an unlock code (which you also don't have). Patent shortening doesn't help.
Cutting copyright and patents, even if you did it right now, would only partially help the problems with the right to repair. Doing so also brings some potential downsides, including more secrecy with innovation. You assume that your taxes pay for all the innovation, and you assume that, if legal protections are removed, businesses won't compensate with weirder home-built protections. Both assumptions are incorrect. Jumping to seemingly easy answers appears fine, but only by finding the real problems and addressing them correctly, as these farmers are doing, will actually get you to your destination.
Huh....John Deere. Am I missing something here?
Are users supplied the software or documentation or hardware to repair their Apple smartphone?
Are users supplied the software or documentation to repair their Windows application?
Are users supplied the software or documentation or hardware to repair their Jaguar SUV?
....or more generally, IS ANY CONSUMER TODAY capable of getting the software, documentation or spares for ANY PRODUCT AT ALL?
P.S. ....and what about the data slurping whereby most manufacturers SIMULTANEOUSLY EXPLOIT their customers!!
Your car must be older, then. The oil and air filters are fair game, as they're considered expendables. But the ECU? More are increasingly locked using black-boxed keys only held by the manufacturer. Other parts of the car increasingly ping back to the (code-signed) computer in a Protected Hardware Path way (to protect against knock-offs and all).
Yes, actually, you CAN go down to the automotive dealer and buy a factory scan tool and do all of the things yourself. Some stuff like making keys and reprogramming requires a subscription to retrieve encryption keys but it's all >available<, if expensive for the average toolbox.
You CANNOT buy a JD scan tool. You're not allowed to own one! They would sue you for having it! It would invalidate your service contract if you even dared to put certain parts on yourself. And they would still have to reset the tripped computer, which means you're back to a service contract or at least paying them (more, sans contract) to come out - which they won't get around to doing until you are PROPERLY screwed, harvest / farm work wise.
Then this tool is probably the main thing. That's the one to go after.
It must be made available to third parties. It must, by law, contain at least as many scan and fix functions as the ones made available to dealers and employees of JD. It must contain the same signing key or keys.
It must be available for the same price as it is sold to their official dealers, and the same time and at the same price as it is released to dealers and with the same financing options. (To prevent the "oh, it's out of stock" excuse or it is $10,000,000 but dealers get a sweet financing deal).
In the case of Taylor and McDs, the company which built a system to extend and enhance Taylor systems by understanding and "plainspeaking" their codes is now suing the bejesus out of McD and Taylor, with discovery now showing that there was an active attempt to defame them by McD C-level staff
This is going to get interesting. and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a settlement offer
Oh, it's a good one which pretty much proves that McD is colluding with Taylor to force the independent franchises into spending a very large amount of money on expensive service contracts that would otherwise not be needed because the machine in question was designed to be user-hostile for service, and that they actively tried to trash the third party's reputation because how dare they make something that allows the franchise to keep their expensive ice cream machine running, along with committing acts of industrial espionage to steal said third party's tech in order to incorporate it into their own stuff which hasn't been released yet because Reasons.
No, but then I've seen the same situation elsewhere.
For example, the Aprilia 850 Mana has a CVT transmission where the drive belt is a consumable. After you replace the belt, you need to use the scan tool to tell the computer to reset the transmission to the new belt.
Guess which scan tool is dealer-only unobtanium? I was considering one until I saw this detail in the forums.
Guess what bike didn't sell well? Then Aprilia had the *balls* to moan that "motorcyclists are too conservative to accept the latest technology"
Now due to US warranty laws, I would have gotten the service for free, but then I still would have had to drive or trailer the bike 280 miles to the nearest dealer every 12 months. No thanks. I have a bike because I don't want to deal with asshole dealers.
had companies trying on the 'deere' method on us... with 'you need special diagnostic tools' and 'factory trained techs' to service the robots
My boss answers this with 'Let me get our engineer to the phone...'
And its
"Ah special diagnostic tool eh? the motor is burned out because the thrust bearings have failed in the swivel plate.. it needs a new set of bearings , the motor rebuilt and the preload setting on the thrust bearing"
"But how do you know that? and that motor needs special tool to extract it from the housing"
"Well the motor is on my desk right now because I'm an engineer who makes tools and the motor needs a rebuild because I'm an engineer with multi-meter"
"But the warrenty is void if non factory techs .."
"Its 9 yrs old and the warrenty ran out 6 yrs ago.. just give me the details...."(at this point my supply of patience has worn thin and the swearing is approaching)
"...special bearings" comes through the phone
"BS! they're standard swedish thrust bearings and they're in the catalogue under 'thrust bearings' "
Service guy admits defeat and says "I'll email the preload setting"
Much smiles result... until the boss finds out the cost of the repair...."HOW &%^*$&%*&ING MUCH?"
...assuming that you've not already got one.
One of the many problems with buying a new car is that you need to avoid makes that are products of conglomerates that see future profits in software. Its quite the thing these days -- features available on subscription, service obfuscation. "Stellantis" appears to be the market leader here? (Never heard of them? Sure you have -- look 'em up.) They're not the only offender, just the current market leader.
I worked on a farm for over ten years (1968 - 1979) and the only electronics on ANY of our equipment was fuel injection system on our tractors. We didn't need GPS to tell us where we were in the filed. We didn't need a computer to tell us where to plant. We didn't need any of the crap they are putting on equipment now. And when something went belly up you didn't need a degree in electronics and computer science to just change the oil. The only reason JD and others won't share the needed code is to protect their own and their dealers profit margins. Nothing else.
True, you can cover a field by eyeball, set the (e.g.) feed rate on the sprayer by hand, etc, etc. But the computerised systems will allow more efficient operations - e.g. accurately measuring grain harvest across the field so you know where to concentrate the fertiliser afterwards, instead of just knowing that you got "X tons off Y acres, giving you X/Y t/acre for the whole field". What if you could cut (say) 10% off your fertiliser bill ? On a big farm where the bill is (pulls figure out of backside), say, into 6 figures, that 10% is a big number in itself.
Similarly, by accurately measuring things, the computer should be able to tell you how to optimise (e.g. gear selection) to use the least fuel. Again, on a big farm, even a small saving can add up to big numbers.
Of course, on a small farm, where it's just the same family that's worked the land for generations, you'll have learned from childhood exactly what works where on your land. On a big farm, you won't have that knowledge in whatever youth you dragged off the street yesterday (OK, that's exaggerated for effect), so having systems that can compensate for the lack of intimate knowledge like you have are going to be worth while.
Farm equipment is a somewhat specialized field of endeavour. (sorry for the pun) JD definitely decided to run with the "Goods are one time income, Services are permanent income" mantra that is Wall Street's current Hot'n'Sexy stock tag. They dug in deep. Note that life cycles for hard goods have been falling off a cliff of late, most manufactured goods systems are aiming to either go with "Throw it out and buy new" or "Lease it and buy a support contract" model. I have a boat, a Newport 28' with an engine in it that was originally designed in the 40's I think. My block has a 1975 stamp on it. It still runs. Rather well actually, and It appears to have been rebuilt twice. (Piston rings, valves and tappets and gaskets all round). I can buy a complete rebuild kit from three different entities for around $890. (Its spring, I'm contemplating it and I did just check). The manufacturer isn't around any more. But there are (estimated) over 40,000 of them still in service in various sailboats throughout the planet. I *seriously* doubt that any of our grandchildren will see a working GM, Ford, Chrysler or VW engine from the 20xx's. Even the enthusiasts will end up scrapping them for something more pragmatic and longer lasting.
Most modern engines have a ton of plastic parts, even on the lower internal part of the engine.
In 30 years most will be dead, no way to rebuild them.
Also, the electronics are a big issue. The ecms etc are complex, but worse still,maps etc are harder and harder to get, so you can't have them running on other hw with ease.. it is a big issue.
That's already been happening. Last year, the EPA fined a small company called PFI & some others for selling ECUs, and diesel mods. Seemed to be part of a push to prevent non-OEM parts in street cars, done under the guise of 'safety' and emissions.
I guess there's some truth in that, eg upgrading a car's brakes could be dangerous, if done badly. If done well, the vehicle could end up safer and more efficient. OEMs aren't immune to bad design decisions either, as factory recalls show.
This is disingenous to put it mildly
PFI and friends were pushing devices which disabled emissions controls and in some cases were used for coal rolling, but in most cases were pushing NOX levels past even VW levels
Some of this stuff was supposedly used for "track cars" but there was no inventory and sales control preventing them being sold to street cars and auditing showed that ~90% of "track car" components were finding their way into road vehicles
These modding companies were breaching federal clean air laws but got away with it for decades because state-level enforcement wasn't happening. Now that enforcement IS happening in the wake of TV shows documenting mod shops carrying out criminal activities and the inevitable crackdown that resulted (Diesel brothers, etc etc), the cottage industry which sprang up to exploit the gaps in emissions law enforcements is crying that it's unfair
What's criminal about modding your own car, especially if it's for off-road use. If the car fails it's emission test, that's the owner's problem. It's a bit like fining Walmart because one of their customers stabbed someone with a spork.
Plus it's possible to tune or mod a car so it's more efficient than stock, so fewer emissions. I do agree with the black smokers. They're a bit like people who think a loud exhaust is a performance mod. Or as Bill once said 'much sound and fury, signifying nothing'.
Anyway, soon diesels will be more expensive than EV's, and the EPA will have to figure out what to do about the particulates created by overweight battery haulers.
You've asked two questions, but only one needs a long answer.
"What's criminal about modding your own car, especially if it's for off-road use. If the car fails it's emission test, that's the owner's problem."
You've just pointed out what's criminal; the owner did something that wasn't allowed under the regulations. If they didn't do that, there wouldn't be something criminal and people mod cars legally all the time.
The bigger question is why the companies should get the blame. In many cases, they shouldn't because their parts could be used legally. If, however, the companies produce components that would be illegal in all cases or if they install the legal parts such that the product is illegal, then they are intentionally breaking the regulations. If Walmart sold sporks and someone stabbed with one, they're not at fault. If Walmart sold plutonium and someone used it in any of the dangerous ways, they wouldn't get away blaming the customer and claiming that "you never know, the customers buying it could be government-approved research chemists". I don't know what the companies making these parts did, but if they made it their business to help people break the law, it would explain why they got in trouble.
I think the issue is one of legislation, and it's interpretation. So there's legislation wrt emissions, and compliance. Manufacturers have to meet emissions standards, as do vehicle owners/operators. Enforcement of legislation gets passed to various agencies. Agency, eg the EPA might be overreaching, and interpreting legislation incorrectly, and issuing fines for something that isn't actually illegal.
Just because a device could be used to do something illegal doesn't mean supply should be illegal. If that's the intent, the legislation should reflect that. So make it law that sale or fitting non-OEM parts is illegal for vehicles on public roads.
But that mights conflict with other policy. So as the EPA was sending out fines, the Biden administration was supporting Right to Repair, and right to modify. Or propping up agriculture by allowing fuel adulteration. So fossil fuels have been refined over the years to improve efficiency, as have drive trains. But governments have also decided to burn food, so ethanol gets added.
One consequence is increased fuel consumption, and worse environmental performance. So you get less work out of a litre of adulterated fuel, which means you have to burn more of it.Situation's probably worse for diesel because of the mass & complexity of emissions reduction technology. But that trades NOx emissions for NH3 production instead.
And then there's EV's, which increase particulate pollution from tire, road and brakes simply due to their extra weight, and reduced efficiency.
But such is politics. EPA says it's illegal, but it isn't really their call. That's the court's decision, ultimately all the way to the Supreme Court, who can rule definitively if selling devices is illegal, or if the EPA is overreaching. But that takes time, and a lot of money, which small players like PFI don't have.
But so it goes. Current events are probably going to complicate matters further. So pump prices are at record levels. Why is this, when 10-20% of the cost isn't from oil, but from ethanol? Or why would a gas bill be rising, when you've signed up to a 'green' supplier of biogas? OK, so some of that might be down to food prices. Fertilizer's getting more expensive. Raney nickel and other catalysts used to turn food into fuel is getting a lot more expensive.
Interesting times ahead.
Deere has a very odd internal development policy. For decades, they wrote their code in C and they have specific rules for coding which require all data to be on stack, not heap. Also; they don’t allow structures.
This means that there are decades of impressively shitty code on John Deere devices. There is a high likelihood that the engineers who wrote the code have no ability to read it themselves.
I think John Deere must have done some sort of internal assessment and realized that if they released source to their systems, they would likely have to also provide some degree of support for the code and it is entirely possible that’s not an option.
I have see lots of JD source code and what I would say is “if you drive a JD tractor, you’re lucky to be alive”
I don't think people are suggesting JD have to release source.
All they are demanding is that JD stop artificially preventing anyone else from creating (e.g.) tools to work on JD machines.
Lets just say that JD decided to make their own bolts, which had (say) 7 faces/points instead of 6. Being something tangible that anyone could take out, measure, and start making both replacements for and tools (spanners & sockets) to fit. JD could probably stick penalty clauses into contracts forbidding their own dealers from possessing suck things - but in reality it would be impossible to keep them off the market.
Instead, what is happened is that there are much more complex intangible parts (software embedded in computers, software tools to interact with those parts, etc). JD are basically using a bad law (the DMCA, designed to allow the film industry to "protect their copyrights" without having to put much effort in) to block the existence and use of compatible parts/tools. It's just like they've managed to lock down things so that no-one can make those 7 faced bolts, or tools to work with them - and they've managed to make a machine that won't work if you replace a 7 faced bolt with a normal 6 faced bolt which is functionally identical and costs 1/10 of the price.
Look at the car market in Europe. Until a decade or 2 ago, the manufacturers had a block exemption. So their dealers had exclusive territories, you could only buy parts from their authorised dealers, and (as best they could) they stopped third parties from making diagnostics equipment that could talk to their vehicles (making it really hard for non-franchised dealers to work on vehicles - can't reset the computer). After this was obviously heading the same way as JD exemplifies, the EU said enough is enough and removed the block exemption. Now in Europe the manufacturers have to, by law, make servicing information available to all, and that includes providing enough information for third parties to make compatible diagnostics tools - meaning that non-franchised garages can work on cars, read the fault codes, and reset them when the problem has been fixed.
Bearing in mind the problems of trying to bust in on this obscenely entrenched market, perhaps the business opportunity is in developing an aftermarket wiring/ sensor system to replace all the nasty locked down stuff on the existing mechanical beast. Let people own their own stuff!
There's too much in a modern beast. It's not just a case of (say) an engine ECU and loom - it's most of the controls and indications, the transmission, hydraulics, etc, etc, etc. All of which is designed to make sure that you can't just replace a part of it and expect any of it to still work. You might be able to reverse engineer the protocols - but then you won't have keys to sign stuff, and if you even think of trying to reverse engineer the cryptography then you'll be DMCA'd into oblivion.
The smaller players won't be able to afford your kit, and the big players probably won't be interested, and JD will SLAPP you down meaning that unless you are incredibly well funded you'll be bankrupt even if you win the case.
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