This is not a political issue unless you want to make it so. It is a purely economic issue brought about by commercial interest. The fact that merchants and fin

This is not a political issue unless you want to make it so. It is a purely economic issue brought about by commercial interest. The fact that merchants and financiers depend on politicians to pass the laws which make it criminal to reverse engineer or share/publicise knowledge derived from reverse engineering does not make it a political issue. You only have to Google 'site:news.ycombinator.com john deere' to see that it is an economic issue. Replacing your $1000 laptop may not be much of an economic issue for you, but your replacing or paying maintenance for your $500,000 combine harvester most certainly is.