[HN Gopher] Colorado governor signs tractor right-to-repair law ...
___________________________________________________________________
Colorado governor signs tractor right-to-repair law opposed by John
Deere
Author : FridayoLeary
Score : 415 points
Date : 2023-04-27 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| vvpan wrote:
| Are there countries out there with good right-to-repair laws? How
| does Colorado now stand up on the international scale?
| eitland wrote:
| I think EU is getting there.
|
| One recent win: Nintendo has agreed to lifetime replacement of
| Switch controllers, and while they or their reseller tried to
| weasel their way out of it by demanding sales receipts,
| consumer authorities has already pointed out the ridiculousness
| of it as every single one of them are eligible for replacement
| anyway.
| jnsie wrote:
| Who wants to set up a company to repair John Deere equipment? We
| can aptly call it "Dear John".
| LastNevadan wrote:
| Did you hear about the tractor salesman whose wife left him?
|
| She left him a John Deere letter!
| tejohnso wrote:
| Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? Is
| there no tractor manufacturer who could step up and advertise
| their lower TCO with their open repair policy? And if not, and if
| the demand was so strong, why wouldn't a new company have sprung
| up to compete on that basis?
| cft wrote:
| Probably because the industry consolidated due to regulatory
| capture to one manufacturer per continent (economic zone).
| causi wrote:
| _And if not, and if the demand was so strong, why wouldn 't a
| new company have sprung up to compete on that basis?_
|
| You don't have to prove the reason why to observe that it
| didn't happen. No company sprung up.
| crazygringo wrote:
| But you can definitely ask why not. Asking questions helps
| our understanding, to help recognize where situations like
| this might also exist, or arise in the future.
|
| I wouldn't want HN to become a place where you can't ask
| questions!
| hanniabu wrote:
| True market competition doesn't exist in capitalism
| csilverman wrote:
| This can't be said enough.
|
| The "capitalism encourages healthy competition that works to
| the advantages of innovation and the consumer" only works
| when companies are prevented from cheating. And the natural
| inclination of anybody who wants money and power is to cheat.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I just want to say that it's a shame you're being severely
| downvoted.
|
| Because this is a serious question whose answer is extremely
| non-obvious. Is this a market failure or not? If so, what kind?
| Is this a very unique market failure that needs specific
| legislation to address in farm equipment specifically, or is it
| generalizable to certain conditions that future legislation
| might target to benefit more people? If so, what are those
| conditions?
|
| I think we can defend right-to-repair, and at the same time ask
| the serious questions about why we need legislation around it
| at all, why it hasn't happened on its own?
| neogodless wrote:
| The top comment on the thread 15 days ago prompted a lot of
| discussion of this point, so it may interest you.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533738
| bogwog wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, but I think this is a really good
| question. Why didn't market competition solve this issue?
|
| I don't know enough about this to be able to answer. Maybe John
| Deer was guilty of anti-competitive behavior that suppressed
| competition in the market? Or there are some other challenges
| that make it difficult to start a farm equipment company?
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| That other challenge is called "John Deere's moat: market
| entrenchment via dealership/service center network."
|
| Agriculture is very time-of-year dependent. Waiting a few
| weeks for spare parts can be devastating to annual revenue.
| mcguire wrote:
| Because, as you suggest, suppressing competition is a winning
| strategy, especially when there are barriers to entry?
| Because the free market prefers monopolies?
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| You're a smallholding farmer. The last couple of years crops
| have done well enough you've managed to pay down enough of your
| debt to the ag supply corp that you've got enough financial
| wiggle room to finance a new equipment purchase. Are you going
| to go with the incumbent player with four generations of
| history in the industry and a network of dealerships across the
| planet or Bay Area BushelMaster's new offering that's been on
| the market for 18 months, is advertised largely in Facebook
| Groups, who's sole dealership is a job trailer behind a carwash
| in Fresno? Hell, Mahindra makes more tractors than any other
| manufacturer on the planet and they're just now starting to
| make inroads into the 20 acre hobby farm, homestead, and
| landscaping market niches (hearafter referred to as the
| Bullshit Tractor Market or BTM for short). It'll be another 20
| years before you start seeing fleets of Mahindra combines
| cruising the seas of wheat in the midwest, if ever that day
| comes.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Is the personal vehicle market much different? Tesla seemed
| to upset all the incumbents, against what look to me to be
| similar issues.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| These two markets are so different that the only properties
| they share is both items cost money and are made out of
| roughly the same raw materials (steel, plastic, wiring,
| etc). Tesla managed to claw their way into the industry
| through a brilliant marketing campaign that nailed the
| subset of the (entirely suburban) market that believe an
| expensive car is a status symbol and new always means
| better. This line absolutely does not scan in the context
| of agricultural equipment, where the defining ethic is one
| of hard work and rugged dependability, both of which have
| to be proven in action. All the hyper-macho cargo-pants-
| and-a-tactical-vest advertising in the world isn't going to
| make a dent in an industry where the only two
| considerations are price and proven durability. So you've
| got a chicken-and-the-egg problem. To prove durability and
| workability you have to have product in the field, but
| nobody's buying unproven equipment. Put another way: the ag
| industry doesn't have a cohort of suburbanites with loose
| cash and a taste for novely to tap into.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| ...and absolutely not because EVs are superior to ICE
| cars in many critera?
|
| I didn't buy my Tesla as a status symbol, I bought it
| because of the 0-60 time.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I'll tell you one reason and it is in lots of farmers' minds
| John Deere is the best. It's a status symbol. That's what it is
| for my Dad. It's a flashy Cadillac. Probably why their insane
| policies have continued.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Why couldn't this have been done through market competition?
|
| There are a ton of problems that can't be solved through market
| competition.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| tldr: read "shop craft is soul craft"
|
| in theory it could have been solved by a more competitive
| market.
|
| I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy stem
| from a lack of competition and then subsequent cartel style
| collusion for the few big players, high barriers to entry
| that are fortified through regulatory capture, and a tendency
| for lots of small players in tight competition to consolidate
| over time into fewer bigger players. (I think we need to
| disincentiveze consolidation in all but the most egregious
| cases of natural monopolies like most public utilities)
|
| this answers so many questions from "why is it so hard to
| work on my new car" to "why do my tennis shoes wear out so
| fast".
|
| there are also cultural factors. people using the tools
| aren't the same craftsmen who build, repair, and sell them.
| each of these disciplines is now siloed and few companies are
| putting real effort into considering this holistic lifecycle
| view of their products.
|
| then when these options do exist people may not be aware, or
| obtaining them is more immediately expensive or less
| convenient in the short term. or they simply don't care.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy
| stem from a lack of competition
|
| That set of problem is indeed enormous. I'm not arguing
| otherwise. But there is also an enormous set of problems
| that can't be solved by more competition, but people put
| forth "more competition" as a solution anyway.
|
| Increasing competition is valuable, but it's not a panacea.
|
| I'm far from convinced that this particular problem can be
| solved by more competition for a few reasons, but the
| primary one is this: the established players have shown
| that behaving this way will maximize profit. New players in
| the space have a greater economic pressure to do the same
| than to do differently.
| bogwog wrote:
| Can you give a good example of a market problem that
| can't be solved through increased competition?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Any problem involving externalities rather than monopoly.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| astockwell wrote:
| Barrier to entry/market penetration meets the 10+ year
| amortization schedules of six/seven/eight figure machinery.
| jollyllama wrote:
| +1 For actually attempting to answer the poster's question.
| Seeing five replies to the effect of "it just can't" was
| frustrating.
| scythe wrote:
| I believe it could also be argued that some fraction of the
| value created by repairability is in fact an externality.
| Your standard rational pricing model uses exponential
| discounting. A farmer does not necessarily expect to be in
| business for the entire useful lifetime of a tractor. But the
| resold tractor provides potentially more value to the economy
| if it is easier to fix. I.e. the initial buyer's discount
| rate should be higher than the overall society's discount
| rate, because they get most of the value from using the
| tractor, not its resale, but society gets more value if the
| tractor can be used longer by other farmers.
|
| This mostly applies to tractors that, today, are too old to
| violate R2R. But someday, the tractors sold today will be
| that old.
| hedgehog wrote:
| In most industries there are scale and network effects that
| favor larger incumbents regardless of the wishes or long term
| interests of customers. That's why startups are nearly always
| started off the springboard of big social or technical changes,
| otherwise there's no room for them to get started. Incumbents
| work to tilt the field in their favor through expanded product
| features, lock-in via cross product integrations, exclusive
| distribution deals, heavy regulation, etc. Simple example: All
| current iPhones are much bigger than I want, but the switching
| cost of going to Android is very high due to lock in via Apple
| services and integration between devices so I don't leave.
| Paradoxically competitive markets require some regulation to
| fight customer lock-in.
| thomasjb wrote:
| 'Open repair policy' ~= No dealership support in your country.
| There's a number of lesser known brands of tractor which just
| bolt together parts from ZF, Perkins and the like, but they
| don't have dealer coverage, and there's low expected longevity
| of what dealers they do have. A Hattat or Basak tractor is a
| fairly straightforward machine which you could work on yourself
| just fine, but there's just no dealer coverage, which means
| there's no quick way to get parts
| jacksnipe wrote:
| It's hard to imagine a more mature industry than _farming
| capital_. It's not exactly going to be easy to even compete on
| quality, let alone disrupt.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| This is how hard that industry is to disrupt: I needed a mid-
| sized utility tractor in the 40-60 hp range with a loader. I
| briefly visited the local Mahindra dealer, decided their
| offerings looked both expensive and flimsy, and then spent a
| month on FB marketplace until I found a 1974 Ford Industrial
| in good working order.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Part of this stems from intellectual property laws, which are
| more or less a legal fiction invented by the government, and
| are not an inherent property of a free market.
| biftek wrote:
| ag machinery has generational life spans, they aren't laptops
| or even lawn mowers.
|
| would you buy the from the start up who pinky promises to
| always let you repair it, or the incumbent who is annoying to
| work with but has existed your entire life and will after you
| die?
| naikrovek wrote:
| there are reasons for government, and things like this are one
| of them. left alone, companies will always prioritize short-
| term goals over long-term goals.
|
| budgets in the short-term are negatively impacted by this
| decision for all/most tractor makers, which is why they
| resisted this change. no one can accurately predict market
| forces that far out, so short-term concerns, being much easier
| to predict, win out.
| valine wrote:
| One of the main benefits of right to repair is to keep tractors
| in service for longer. Your solution is for farmers to throw
| away their tractors and buy new ones?
|
| What's to stop the new manufacturer from implementing a similar
| policy once the farmers are locked in with an expensive
| purchase?
| mhb wrote:
| A contract?
| valine wrote:
| How about a law? Then every farmer doesn't have to
| negotiate repair terms.
| eitland wrote:
| As we have seen it didn't work, at least not right now.
|
| Even if this is just a band aid while we wait for competition
| to pop up (I'm not that optimistic about the market) it would
| still be valuable and I see no problems with it.
| scottyah wrote:
| It probably would happen, it'd just take more time. The best
| minds of my generation are trying to become famous on tiktok,
| resting and vesting at Big Tech, or writing day trading
| algorithms. Minimal work to max profit is what we're all trying
| to optimize.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Minimal work to max profit is what we're all trying to
| optimize.
|
| That attitude is why John Deere and similar have the
| anticustomer policies that they do.
| mcguire wrote:
| That, as they say, is the purpose of any corporation. Their
| responsibility is to their shareholders.
| JohnFen wrote:
| No. This is a mischaracterization of both the purpose of
| corporations and the responsibility corporations have to
| their shareholders.
|
| The purpose of a corporation is not "profit above all
| else". Corporations are also supposed to operate in a
| manner that benefits society. We used to actually strip
| corporations of their charters when they failed their
| social responsibility.
|
| The responsibility to shareholders depends a lot on the
| charter, but in general, it's to run the company in a
| profitable and sustainable manner. Again, it's not "make
| the most money possible no matter what". If that were the
| case, then there would be no corporations engaging in
| anything but the highest-margin sorts of business. So
| there'd be no low-margin stuff like toilet paper.
| wavefunction wrote:
| The purpose of incorporation is to encourage business
| speculation by offering a mechanism to limit personal
| liability of the owners. That's the only purpose a
| corporation has and they definitely don't have
| responsibilities themselves as they are only a legal
| fiction. The employees of a corporation have
| responsibilities.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I think things are moving in the opposite direction. tech has
| enabled heavier handed control over products Long after they
| are sold. often customers legally do not own the products
| they buy through IP law shenanigans amounting to legal
| machinations as bizarre as leasing a pair of tennis shoes for
| $120. you're free to throw them out but you may not use them
| in a way that reflects poorly on the brand.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Regulatory capture has distorted the market, making it harder
| for competitors to join. How much of the existing issue
| preventing sharing of information, tools, and technology to
| repair the current equipment is supported by government laws,
| be they IP, DRM, or anti-hacking, or other?
| adamc wrote:
| The suggestion needs evidence to be anything more than
| ideology.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| What evidence is lacking? Regulatory capture is a well-
| documented phenomenon, that it exists is not in question.
| Surely you're not proposing that industries are spending
| billions to drive this phenomenon for no reason?
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Why would there be a demand of evidence for my response
| when there isn't one for the previous question I was
| responding to? It appeared to me the question asked was
| ideological, given that it was an informal question of a
| few sentences and not giving plenty of evidence to the idea
| that another competitor would have solved the issue?
| toss1 wrote:
| First, "free market competition" is NOT a cure-all for
| everything.
|
| The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-
| accurately allocating resources and labor than central
| planning.
|
| However, the "Free Market" is absolutely horrible at solving
| other problems, starting with the Commons Problem, and
| including the tendency towards monopolies, which are the
| problem here. It is a near-mathematical certainty in a 'free
| market' that the big get bigger, and weild that power to crush
| any upstarts. Even if there is massive demand for something
| new, the entrenched monopoly/near-monopoly/cartel players will
| crush it. This is the case here. Also, in regulated markets
| (i.e., all of them, see next paragraph), the large players will
| often succeed at regulatory capture, which further enables
| them.
|
| Also note that the "free market" is an absolute fiction. It
| does not exist. Every market has rules, spoken or tacit.
|
| The only question is what are the rules and how are they
| enforced. Wise governments will set rules that minimize the
| tendency towards monopoly, and protect their institutions and
| citizens from regulatory capture. This is a step in that
| direction.
|
| Another tack to answer your question is to observe what
| actually happens in these "free" markets. There has been
| enormous demand for this, with pressure provoking legislatures
| to attempt to act for decades, yet no competitor has arisen.
| Similarly, it took literally most of a century, and major
| legislation to get car companies to even start installing
| safety gear like collapsible steering columns (replacing the
| ones that impaled the drivers in small collisions), seat belts,
| airbags, etc. Plenty of demand, but a cartel-ish industry fails
| to meet it.
|
| Re-examine your libertarian tendencies more closely. I also
| used to find it an attractive concept, but it is full of glib
| answers that are not actually realizable in the real world (and
| often not even in toy models). Actually working through the
| consequences of many of the concepts shows that they are just a
| mirage, and sticking to those ideas simply enables monopolists
| and oligarchs to thrive.
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| dktoao wrote:
| Bravo, I wish I had read this when I was a young "free
| market" idealist.
| legohead wrote:
| Competition isn't enough for this issue, it needs to be written
| into law.
|
| And tractors/farm equipment isn't the only thing we need right
| to repair on. So count this as a small victory towards a much
| larger goal.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Tractors aren't a pure commodity. It's an ecosystem of
| machinery, service and accessories.
|
| Market forces work best with commodities and substitute
| products. The farther away you get, the weaker the effect.
| mindslight wrote:
| Because P != NP, as far as we know.
| kodah wrote:
| This is a huge win for rural people, open source, and ag-tech.
| Hats off to Colorado for understanding what's at stake and the
| brass to fix it.
| whitemary wrote:
| Hardly. This never should have been necessary to begin with.
| It's pathetic that it took so long to reverse.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| >> This is a huge win for rural people, open source, and ag-
| tech. Hats off to Colorado for understanding what's at stake
| and the brass to fix it.
|
| > Hardly. This never should have been necessary to begin
| with. It's pathetic that it took so long to reverse.
|
| Are you kidding me? We have been lambasting corrupt
| politicians who are too greedy to stand against lobbyists and
| wishing for the right to repair for years and now that it's
| happened, all you can say is "no big deal, this isn't a win,
| harrumph harrumph?" Bollocks to you, good sir.
|
| Of course it should have been a given in the first place!
| However, while I can't speak for you, I myself live in an
| imperfect world where we must do the best we can with what we
| have. So if, for a change, elected officials act in the best
| interests of their constituents to overturn something that
| you and I both readily agree is a disgusting perversion of
| the law, YES it's a win, and GOOD FOR THEM. Shame on you.
| neogodless wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35532479 Colorado passes
| agricultural Right to Repair (ifixit.com - 15 days ago, 124
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35714294 Colorado becomes
| first to pass 'right to repair' for farmers (wivb.com - 1 day
| ago, 83 comments)
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Hopefully we see more like this. But also, as a Coloradoan, just
| wanna say I appreciate Polis for giving time to _real_
| legislation. I know now everyone loves him, he is a politician
| after all, but you gotta love a Gov. who doesn 't exist solely to
| posture for the extreme half of his/her base.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| I have to say my biggest criticism of Polis is his asinine
| opinions on Pueblo chile being superior to Hatch
| mfragin wrote:
| Here in Pueblo there are a lot of "closet" Hatch chili people
| ;-)
|
| Seriously though, I think Polis has done a good job and he's
| the rare politician who can understand the implications of
| the right-to-repair law.
|
| When I was teaching Comp Sci at the high school level and we
| got a bunch of refurbished computers from his foundation (
| http://www.jaredpolisfoundation.org/ ).
|
| The desktops came with bare-bone Windows and a bunch of open
| source applications. Of course we put Linux on all of them
| anyway, but most people back then would have NOT known how to
| use a Linux box, so the setup they came with was
| understandable.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| We should be so lucky that our politicians' biggest fault is
| poor taste in chiles... :)
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| This is only for farmers and farm equipment. I'll take a win when
| I get one, but do we have a right to repair our property or not?
| I think we do, and a government gracefully giving us some of our
| rights is not good enough.
| MisterTea wrote:
| This sets precedence for future cases. This is a good win no
| matter how small or obscure people want to think it is.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| We just need to take this same success and copy/paste it to
| other industries enough times until everyone gets tired of
| doing N different legislation and a more abstract and
| widespread bill is created and passed.
|
| Farm equipment was a good first win because the opposition
| isn't as big as some other industries. It's relatively easy to
| get everyone on board with helping farmers and compared to say
| Apple or Google companies like John Deer don't have as deep of
| pockets.
|
| We probably won't have a lot of success jumping directly to one
| of the more difficult markets like phones or cars, since the
| opposition there is strong, well connected and well funded.
|
| The next battle will likely be won over a market that is bigger
| than farm equipment but smaller than phones or cars in general.
| I could see kitchen appliances, washesr/dryers or other
| equipment in that space being a good target. It would be
| relatively easy to motivate a base of people to care about it,
| because everyone has these appliances, and the opposition is
| fragmented and not as well funded in lobbying.
| ip26 wrote:
| Step by step. John Deere is allegedly one of the most flagrant
| abusers of repairability, so it's the right place to start.
| asebold wrote:
| This is so, so important for helping family farms stay alive.
|
| The amount my family has saved by being able to fix and even
| modify stuff on their own is huge. My dad still mows our lawn
| with an antique Allis-Chalmers hooked up to a commercial mower.
| Equipment is wildly expensive compared to margins at smaller
| scales (think like 2k acres for small farms). Things need to last
| for decades or generations in order to keep a profit.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| [flagged]
| m4jor wrote:
| I'd argue allowing farmers to fix their own stuff is way
| better (and safer) than them having to seek out sketchy
| foreign vendors/hacks in order to fix their own equipment on
| the black market as an alternative.
|
| Obviously the majority of farmers aren't going to be going
| into the software and editing it themselves, but instead
| paying reputable companies in the industry to do the
| programming/fixing/debugging for them.
|
| Companies like John Deere could embrace this by releasing a
| ton of guides and self-learning classes to teach these same
| farmers how to do basic coding, repairs, debugging and etc.
| themselves. Could start a whole new wave and generation of
| tech-literate and educated farmers which would be better for
| all involved.
| ep103 wrote:
| If the John Deere engineers understand those systems so well,
| then they could design their products in ways that the
| farmers could repair the products for common use cases. They
| are intentionally designing the products to prevent that.
| That's the whole problem.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| [flagged]
| crmd wrote:
| Safety and performance are elements of the cover story
| not drivers of the product strategy.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| >They're designing the products for maximum safety and
| performance
|
| How do you know this. Do you work for Jon Deere? Since
| the code is closed source that's simply an assumption
| shagie wrote:
| Product liability for industrial and agricultural
| equipment gets interesting.
|
| You can modify a household lawn mower and if you get
| maimed by it by those modifications, you're at fault.
|
| However, for industrial equipment if you can modify it -
| the manufacturer is likely liable. Consider how often you
| hear about deaths due to manufacturing defects (the stats
| for deaths for framers is 60 - 70 per year per 100,000 in
| the US).
|
| https://www.wkw.com/farming-accidents/blog/farming-
| accidents... (personal injury lawyer site)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > They're designing the products for maximum safety and
| performance. It was never in the cards to make it open.
|
| Well, then, that was _stupid_ of John Deere and makes
| them a victim of their own arrogance. Period. There
| wouldn 't be a law right now if John Deere hadn't
| unnecessarily, by their own actions, pissed off so many
| people in the process of increasing "safety" and
| "performance". As though anybody complained about the
| lack of "safety and performance" in the century-long
| history of tractors before computers came along and saved
| us.
|
| Let's be clear here: John Deere, a multi-billion dollar
| company, isn't the victim here, but the aggressor against
| family farms, good intentions or not. Mourning for them
| is absurd.
|
| > A huge change, that will take years and millions to
| achieve?
|
| Nope. It's as easy as clicking "Publish" on the
| repositories and setting the Dropbox folder to "Public."
| I could do it in 15 minutes. Any legal review or trade
| secret review or whatever else is entirely the company
| protecting their own interests. John Deere has done that
| long enough, a hard deadline is their self-inflicted
| penalty.
| jitix wrote:
| This legislation is more akin to allowing you to repair
| your PC and replace a damaged RAM module.
|
| I don't think any farmer is looking to tinker with the
| control software, and even if they want they should be
| able to tinker considering it's their property and their
| farmland and only they themselves are liable for any
| damages caused to neighbours or otherwise.
|
| John Deere is just trying to create artificial barriers
| and extract more value from existing customers.
| eganist wrote:
| It kinda just sounds like you're content with family
| farms not existing, because all of your points fail to
| address the economic realities for these farms.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| (As an outsider looking in) I think Deere's (and many
| other companies) financial incentives more align with
| product gatekeeping, than with maximum safety and
| performance; maximum safety does not pay Deere's bills,
| but service appointments do.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Huh? This is about things like hardware modules not
| connecting to the bus until an authorized repairer allows
| them to, exposing part numbers so board level repairs can
| happen, releasing board schematics, and things like that.
| Nobody is suggesting re-writing firmware? There is a mountain
| of context that you're either unaware of or leaving out on
| purpose for some reason.
| beiller wrote:
| This is an odd comment in my opinion. Do you work at John
| Deere? I ask only because you say you are familiar with their
| testing environment. I don't think your horror scenario is
| realistic. How many farms are located in a neighborhood? If a
| farmer destroys property they are probably liable. I don't
| think John Deere is restricting repairs to protect random
| property damage since since I've never heard of that
| happening before.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Sorry, should have said, worked on the John Deere guidance
| module for auto-driving tractors. As a contractor.
|
| There are field limits defined. But they are respected as
| algorithms need, to determine turn parameters at the end of
| a row. I could imagine easily that fiddling with that code
| could end up with a tractor on the other side.
|
| What horror scenarios do you think are realistic? Remember
| we are considering multi-ton machines with maybe a thousand
| horsepower, wielding huge spinning blades and crusher
| mechanisms. What scenario can we consider that is not a
| horror show?
| itake wrote:
| I am still trying to understand your point.
|
| While I agree these systems are highly complex, I am not
| sure why farmers need to mess with source code to perform
| a repair? If farmers are messing with the code (disabling
| sensors or whatever), then I'd have to assume the farmer
| knows they are taking on this risk that their tractor
| will not function as expected.
|
| If sensors can be safely disabled, then why not provide
| an easy to do that?
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| pitched wrote:
| Assuming that there is some sort of sensor that's
| measuring these turn radiuses? What happens to the
| machine when the sensor malfunctions? Does it shut down
| (requiring work to stop), keep going (being a huge
| liability) or is there a box of them under the chair the
| operator can swap in and keep going? I think what's being
| asked for here is option 3, not so much being able to
| modify turn parameters.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| To me, even though you might call this hitting a nerve,
| this comment and the one you did earlier, scream the
| classic stereotype of white collar workers looking down
| on blue collar workers like farming. "If they were smart
| like me, they wouldn't be farmers." "They are too dumb to
| manage a multi-ton machine despite having done it for
| over a century. Unlike me, who has written code for a few
| years."
|
| Farmers aren't stupid. They're actually sometimes very
| high-IQ people because maintaining a profit with so many
| constraints and uncontrollable circumstances is extremely
| difficult; and Silicon Valley flunkies would be in
| bankrupt within days of trying. If they could even
| survive waking up at 4AM for more than 3 days in a row.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm a robotics engineer designing an open source solar
| powered farming robot (links in my profile).
|
| I gotta be honest it sounds like you have been exposed to
| Deere's propaganda and believed it. To put this another
| way, I feel like you're missing what this bill is really
| about.
|
| Deere has added software locks to their modules so that
| even if you can source another identical module with
| identical firmware and you're capable of plugging it in,
| you have to use dealer software to change the software
| lock and allow the module to work with your tractor.
|
| No one is saying farmers need source code, they're saying
| they need access to the dealer software tools (not
| engineering tools!) to allow replacement of modules
| without a trip to the dealer.
|
| This is extremely important for farmers! Please read the
| replies to your comments and consider that you may have
| been misinformed. Respectfully, I think this can be a
| learning moment for you today.
| jitix wrote:
| Your car, heater, air frier, lawn mower, etc all have the
| potential to kill you. I'd even argue that the
| probability of a car killing someone due to technical
| malfunction or user tinkering is way higher than a farm
| equipment that operates in a large open area.
|
| If all of these things were locked down following John
| Deere's logic our daily lives would become very expensive
| and inconvenient.
|
| We as a society have more than enough legal and insurance
| frameworks to mitigate any of the risks that you've
| mentioned.
| shagie wrote:
| Your car, heater, air fryer, and lawn mower are consumer
| devices. If you modify them and they become unsafe,
| you're at fault.
|
| However, farm equipment is classified as industrial
| equipment and if you _can_ modify it to be unsafe without
| being an expert in that domain, then it is the
| manufacturers fault that you can do that.
|
| Locking down industrial equipment so that it requires a
| trained technician to modify it is one of the ways that
| industrial equipment manufacturers try to mitigate the
| liability that they face.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > then it is the manufacturers fault that you can do
| that.
|
| This is not always the case, and if it gets to the point
| that legislation has to be written to stop you, it's
| likely you don't care that much about the law in the
| first place.
|
| When Marvin Heemeyer built the Killdozer, nobody blamed
| Komatsu for providing him the parts. Unprecedented,
| violent problems can happen with all sorts of equipment.
| We stop these accidents by holding professionals liable,
| not their machines.
| kahrl wrote:
| Oh look, the Pinkertons are trying to sow FUD in hacker news
| again.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Joe's been an active member here with good contributions
| for a long time. I disagree with his opinion in this
| thread, but he's not some fake account trying to cause
| trouble.
| pitched wrote:
| The way I understood the issue (as an outsider) is that they
| weren't offering things like gaskets for sale. Sure, I can
| pull out the old one if it pops but what do I do now? That
| plus there being a remote kill switch if someone does figure
| out how to manufacture replacements...
| adamc wrote:
| It's a step. The right to repair should apply to many items
| beyond farm equipment, but hey, it's still a win.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-27 23:00 UTC)