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I recall John Deere became infamous for trying to DRM their tractors to hell, so that only official authorized ($$$) workshops are allowed to fix anything. Ah,

by jabl 10y ago

I recall John Deere became infamous for trying to DRM their tractors to hell, so that only official authorized ($$$) workshops are allowed to fix anything. Ah, yes, a bit of googling brings something up: https://boingboing.net/2015/05/13/john-deere-of-course-you-ow.html https://boingboing.net/2015/05/13/john-deere-of-course-you-o... I mean, if I were a farmer or had a reason to own a tractor for some other reason, I'd avoid them. Then again, the cynic in me thinks that everybody is doing this, JD just got caught and their ham-fisted PR response made it an order of magnitude worse for them.

moby 10y ago
It'll be interesting to see how they progress on this front in the near term. I recall just a few years ago that Ford was extremely closed off with their developer toolkit on their SYNC systems; slowly, as they realize that collaborative development can take place with no impact to central functions of the vehicle's operation, they can open up the ecosystem a little bit. That's all an ideal state, of course; reality is wrought with questions over who owns what, etc. but I'm optimistic.