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Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

428 points by pak 9y ago

andrewchambers 9y ago
I don't like the idea that we have to pass laws to force companies to make a better product. Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Barriers to entry + capital costs.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  Liability laws are in dire need in the software industry. Security for instance would not be such an abysmal disaster if companies were held liable for the insecure garbage they are pumping out.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    Indeed. No one should hire a programmer except that they be licensed and bonded, just like any other form of skilled labor. Users of software developed by unlicensed programmers should also be held liable if their machines should be compromised and used in a botnet or other malicious activity. That means no Linux or, in your case, BSD.
    - michaelmrose 9y ago
      Just attach liability to a sale taking place.
- digitalzombie 9y ago
  > Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this? You make it sounds so easy to start a tractor company.
  - notliketherest 9y ago
    The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. By your logic your statement could just have easily as been "to start a car company" or "to start a rocket company" or "to start a computer company". These are all examples of industries whose existing players were supplanted by a better idea with smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs.
    - andrepd 9y ago
      > The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. Just two words, capital costs, suffice to throw that entire line of thought to the ground.
      - cmurf 9y ago
        It's a huge barrier to market entry effectively making for a natural monopoly. In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar and they don't have that much overlap product wise these days. If you go through the long list of farming equipment companies, they're all gone now. Defunct, or conglomeration.
        pacaro 9y ago
        At some point anti-trust should kick in, regardless of the origin of the monopoly, the theory behind anti-trust is to protect the consumer
        randomdata 9y ago
        > In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar Caterpillar? In agriculture? Do you mean Challenger (AGCO) or CLAAS, both of whom have used Caterpillar branding at points in the past? Although neither of them have recently. Curiously, you're the second person to have mentioned Caterpillar being involved in agriculture in this discussion. Which surprises me. They are not a player at all, outside of some overlap use of their industrial products (skidsteers, payloaders, etc.)
- thearn4 9y ago
  There is a fair amount of competition in this space. Around me, I see a lot of Kubota, New Holland, etc. Not too many John Deeres actually.
  - froindt 9y ago
    > Around me, I see a lot of Kubota, New Holland, etc. Not too many John Deeres actually. Around Iowa I see these brands as well, but I don't see Kubota and New Holland as being as massive and innovative as Deere and Cat are/can be. John Deere has been notorious in the legal system in its pursuit of these locks on software. They have very good autonomy software which gets better every season, and distinguishes them from Kubota and New Holland. Their autonomy seems to be up-and-coming, but isn't in primetime just yet. What area of the country are you in? I wonder if it is more of a geographic difference in brand choice, or if John Deere doesn't handle the local crops in your area as well.
    - cc439 9y ago
      Kubota and New Holland dominate the southeast in my experience. I've even seen several John Deere dealers convert over to other lines recently.
    - thearn4 9y ago
      I'm in N.E. Ohio, just outside the Cleveland metro area. The croplands here aren't at large as what you'd see in central OH, but plot sizes of around a hundred acres aren't too hard to spot. That's a good point that autonomy could be a big deal for some consumers, and I bet larger plot size is a factor in that.
      - froindt 9y ago
        It's definitely easier with a large plot of land. Iowa is largely setup on a 1 mile by 1 mile grid of roads, making plots of 640 acres. I don't know if the grid of gravel roads is common or not. I've heard of John Deere being able to stay within about an inch of the previously traveled path on subsequent passes through the field. "Guaranteeing" you won't drive over previously planted crops and being able to customize the spraying, doing most driving autonomously,and collect yield per acre in real-time during harvesting, etc. make it a compelling solution out here.
- cc439 9y ago
  "Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this?" They are, that's why companies like Kubota are expanding their US-based manufacturing capacity like crazy. Capital equipment like a Harvester or practically anything above credit card expense level industrial equipment is purchased on a "make or break" level of decision making. Brand inertia can only carry a company like John Deere so long before the competition eats their lunch. Remember, this is a recent (past ~5 years) development in a market where equipment is expected to last ~10 years or longer. The next time these farmers decide to buy a piece of capital equipment, I guarantee they buy the unrestricted option.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  You must not know any farmers or ranchers. John Deere gets more love than Ford, Chevy, and Dodge combined. I haven't ever met someone who has sat in a tractor without a positive opinion of this company. Agriculture is a very technical industry, so most of these people are quite well-educated, but that education doesn't usually include software. As soon as someone in this field wraps their head around DRM and its consequences, they are likely to fight it hard, but getting to that point takes a little more explanation than it does for you or me. In the grand scheme of things, at least in the short term, advertising "no DRM" isn't likely to make a dent in John Deere's market share.
  - obsurveyor 9y ago
    > I haven't ever met someone who has sat in a tractor without a positive opinion of this company. Then you must not know very many farmers or ranchers because Case IH(formerly International) vs. Deere is a very big thing in those circles. It is very much a rivalry with typically no overlap much like the Ford/Chevy/Dodge rivalries.
shawn-butler 9y ago
The motherboard/vice article NPR is blatantly ripping off here is much better in my opinion. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farm...
itchyjunk 9y ago
"farmers could damage the machines, like bypassing pollution emissions controls to get more horsepower." Isn't this the problem with warranties? People could try to mod it, end up damaging it and try to get it replaced with warranties. I also don't fully understand this software. Is it just completely vendor locked? That sounds really unreasonable. It should allow for at least basic debugging and trouble shooting. Is this software locking only in large $100k + harvester type equipment? Does the vendor have other reasonable explanation of doing this? I wonder if the software designer for this equipments would have reasonable arguments for such locks or if this is just profit driven decision.
- Laforet 9y ago
  It is usually 100% proprietary, think of iOS devices and game consoles
- R_haterade 9y ago
  Can confirm it's usually proprietary and locked. An old roommate is employed by an implement manufacturer--his sole job is traveling the western united states, making housecalls to upload newer versions of control software to equipment. They absolutely DO NOT trust the owners to do it themselves. This has pretty frightening implications for the state of consumer goods, if industrial goods are already going this direction.
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    Consumer electronics have been disposable for 25 years now. You don't exactly see an electronics repair shop in every town anymore.
    - fineline 9y ago
      Or even basic electrical appliances. I have a toaster, a kettle and a vacuum which are all bricked because of peripheral failures - two poorly (deliberately..?) designed mechanical switches and a charger - which in many cases would cause the whole otherwise functional appliance to be junked. Only somewhat resourceful and stubborn folk like myself bother to fix these things themselves.
douche 9y ago
There's going to be a huge market in used pre-DRM heavy machinery. The purely mechanical/hydraulic versions of this stuff is virtually indestructible, with a little maintenance.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  People buy software-controlled tractors in the first place because they really want the software functions. If purely mechanical versions could fill the same need, DRMed tractors would never have sold to begin with.
- randomdata 9y ago
  I'll gladly pay the cost of a John Deere mechanic from time to time before I go back to the purely mechanical tractors we used to have on the farm. When I hear this kind of comment I have to wonder if: 1. The person has never spent time in a tractor. 2. Has never spent time in a modern tractor. 3. Has never spent time in an old tractor.
  - anjc 9y ago
    What're the benefits of newer models in terms of daily usage?
    - randomdata 9y ago
      Comfort. In the grain business my tractors don't get anywhere near daily usage, but when their window of usefulness opens, the days are long and the longer you can handle keeping the machine rolling the better. Not all of the advancements are directly related to computers, but they sort of come part and parcel at this point.
      - anjc 9y ago
        Gotcha, thanks
tim333 9y ago
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 (177 comments)
notliketherest 9y ago
When we buy a piece of software, we own and "physically" posses a binary which we feel we can rightly take apart, modify, and mess with it because we view it as analogous to owning a toaster or stereo in the physical world. It's in our home, we can touch it, and we in essence control it. Now the same is never said for software as a service. We buy subscriptions to services all the time but don't demand an ability to modify or control the software. It's defined in our agreement. Now it seems to me that the companies that sell these tractors have decided to pursue a model by which their software is more or less SaSS (providing encrypted updates over the air). Why is it that these farmers believe they have a right to modify that software?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Because software as a service is the wrong model for farmers. When equipment breaks in the middle of the field during harvest you do what needs to be done to fix it right then and there. Edit: grammar
  - cmurf 9y ago
    I'd have less of a problem with this if it were a free and open source license, and therefore there's competition available for the service, including do it yourself service should you choose. But most farms are now corporate so it sorta makes sense those types will drive this kind of closed loop proprietary fixed cost maintenance model.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      That's a good point. If they're corporate and the tractor driver is paid by the hour then the pressure to fix isn't there. Though I suspect a corporate farm would contract out harvesting so they pay a fixed cost per unit-area, and now the contractor is under pressure to fix asap.
- byebyetech 9y ago
  Except farmers or any customer who buys physical product are under no obligation to understand or believe there is Software that is running the Physical product they purchased. If i buy a physical product i should be able to control it completely, unless i am not buying a physical product but a service that happen to be physical, in which case seller must own all responsibility of its performance in the field.
cmurf 9y ago
Among the most successful cars were those with straightforward replacement parts, a defacto standard, and reasonably well documented and available maintenance manuals. Tesla wants control over this, by literally renting the maintenance manual, and remotely disabling the car if repairs or parts aren't authorized. I don't expect the model 3 market will appreciate this business model. It will be a much more price sensitive market compared to the early models which has been relatively inelastic for repairs and resale. Consider the x86 computer market, if every component had signed firmware, and the main system verified this signature in case of component replacement, and would fail to function at all if signature verification failed. What a pain... Consider voting machines, proprietary hardware, expensive to design, maintain, audit, and go obsolete in as few as 1/2 dozen uses. Compare that to pencil and paper. The older I get the more Darth Vader I become: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." (Let's say the Force is common sense in this metaphor.)
arca_vorago 9y ago
I wonder, is the a GPL tractor software project out there yet?
- kolokolo 9y ago
  So, we have: 1) Blackbox on-board computers, probably dozens of subtle configuration variations 2) Blackbox binary-only, possibly obfuscated firmware 3) Possibly TiVo-ized runtime. 4) Farmers as the ones who'd possibly be interested. 5) Then, manufacturers could sue for various DMCA violations I'd say the odds of this happening would be some 1e-3 a year. This is a policy issue that shouldn't be attacked technically. Better get the farmer write their Congress members.
- dark_star 9y ago
  I don't know, but there is an open source tractor design: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac Primitive but think of Linux when it was released. It's part of the Global Village Construction Set, open source machines that could make up the technological basis for a civilization: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...
  - sleepychu 9y ago
    Is it self bootstrapping?
TaylorAlexander 9y ago
I think we'd all be better off if basically everything was open source, by way of eliminating intellectual property protections provided by governments. As an alternate solution, those of us with engineering skills can work to create an open source economy with open source factories, computers, and products. This would never be a problem nor would it be likely to happen if genuinely competitive options existed for farmers that were not locked down. Another way we in this community can help is by helping smaller businesses learn the value of open source and get them using and creating it. I believe with a sufficiently open source base in our economy, we can make great headway into eliminating material poverty. I write a little about this on my personal site, here: http://tlalexander.com/machine/ http://tlalexander.com/machine/
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  I wonder how much more the bunghole of the RIAA/MPAA would tighten up with DRM if it wasn't even illegal to copy stuff they publish with reckless regard. You'd basically have to outlaw DRM too, or everyone would just make their stuff unusable/uncopyable.
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    If DRM became illegal to even attempt, they'd have a brief period of panic followed by a nice jump in profit when they finally realize they've been wasting bunghole loads of dollars applying DRM to stuff for no reason.
  - problems 9y ago
    Hah, are you kidding? Even the most advanced VM based protections are routinely bypassed by crackers. Things which have an analog hole vulnerability are just too easy. The only way something like that would happen is a big shift in hardware towards tamper resistant stuff with hardware crypto. And if all the RE work on that tamper resistant hardware could be done in public things would get... very fun.
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
tbyehl 9y ago
I'm starting to wonder if these articles are driven by a PR firm paid by John Deere's competition. They're always about John Deere and only John Deere. Aside from the Motherboard / Vice article, they never provide any specifics about the maintenance or repair operations that farms are prevented from doing on their own. With the Vice article, 2 of the 3 things they mention are modifying the tractors to operate in ways the manufacturer did not intend which could result in damage.
- ebbv 9y ago
  I've had the same thought. It's such a niche issue and really it's incredibly standard for any kind of business hardware, which is what tractors are. Also nobody's being forced to buy new tractors, there's tons of old tractors still out and running and working every day. So why do these articles appear with such regularity? (To be clear I think that all software should be open source and vendors should charge for support, but that's beside the point here.)
  - tmnvix 9y ago
    > Also nobody's being forced to buy new tractors, there's tons of old tractors still out and running and working every day. There are also fewer every day.
    - ebbv 9y ago
      It's true but I would wager independent farmers are more likely to repair and keep old tractors around, or buy used when they do have to buy one. I bet the biggest buyer of new tractors are the farming conglomerates, and I wonder if they're behind these articles. Trying to get a grass roots movement going to push John Deere to change these practices?
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      You'd be surprised how long old, robust vehicles live for. I don't have any clear data for tractors, but older trucks that can be repaired with minimum tooling get used and re-used in places in Africa, almost to no end.
known 9y ago
And https://www.iphoneasyunlock.com/ https://www.iphoneasyunlock.com/
mabbo 9y ago
It's not just the farmer paying for this: it's everyone who eats food. The time wasted is lost productivity. The extra fees just for a software unlock is lost money. The farmer has to either charge more, or go out of business sooner. Either way, the cost of food rises.
- kodfodrasz 9y ago
  The only problems is that the creators of those software did not get their food and tools for free. Was that also lost productivity? Maybe we could fix it by giving everything for free!
watertom 9y ago
What's ironic is most of these farmers are republicans and voted in the people who enable this crap.
swanson 9y ago
It seems so unbelievable to me that there are enough people that are a) John Deere equipment owners/renters and b) capable of debugging and patching issues in a C++ codebase for these stories to keep appearing. Debates on the virtues of open source aside, is this actually the solution? Or is it a symptom of, say, poor quality software releases? or service visits that are too costly? or overloaded dealers who can't handle harvest-time support loads? I just don't believe that allowing people to tinker with the software is going to be the magic answer that these folks seem to think it is.
- userbinator 9y ago
  You underestimate the resourcefulness of farmers and the tenacity of reverse-engineers. To those who do it, I bet this is a lot more fun than cracking simple licensing protections on a software.
- randomdata 9y ago
  As a software developer and farmer (and owner of some John Deere equipment), it doesn't seem that unbelievable to me. I know quite a few farmers who also work in tech. The capital intensive nature of the business means that many come from other high paying professions, of which tech jobs tend to be among, to support the habit. Although from everything I have read on the subject, source code does not really seem to be what people are after. They just want to have equal access to manuals and tools that the authorized dealers have. The guy in the service truck isn't modifying source code either.
- yorwba 9y ago
  > It seems so unbelievable to me that there are enough people that are a) John Deere equipment owners/renters and b) capable of debugging and patching issues in a C++ codebase for these stories to keep appearing. There doesn't have to be any overlap between these groups of people. The issue here seems to be that some mechanical parts that are easily replaced, are not accepted by the controlling computer, unless it is authorized using specific administration software. Basically, ink cartridge lock-in, but for tractors. To circumvent the restrictions, no farmer has to know C++, they only need a pirated version of the software to integrate the replacement parts into the system. So what the farmers want is not the ability to arbitrarily modify the software running on their equipment, but simply a way to do purely mechanical repairs on their own.
Sytten 9y ago
My dad is a farmer and I can assure you that this is a real problem. Every piece of equipment now as its own proprietary, closed-source and, most of the time, incompatible software. Plus, many of them don't get any update after the product launch. When you are in rush to plant or harvest you just can`t afford to wait for an authorized dealer. And if they fail, good luck trying to find a replacement that is not 100x overpriced because it has been discontinued one year after you bought it. I tried repairing a GPS system once and it required a special serial cable + software which costed more than 100$ just to update the driver...
- swampthinker 9y ago
  Sounds like an opportunity...
  - pavement 9y ago
    ...for famine.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    .. to get sued for patent infringement. Or DMCA violation.
    - keyme 9y ago
      This is interoperability. At the very least this is a gray area.
      - acdha 9y ago
        Those are potentially why the lawsuit would fail if you're lucky. You'd still have to fight it at ruinous cost for a small business – and expect customers to disappear if there's any chance they'd be included.
      - criddell 9y ago
        This seems exactly like the type of situation for which the Librarian of Congress would carve out a DMCA exemption.
userbinator 9y ago
Every time I read or hear about new developments in creating safer/more secure software, I am reminded of scenarios like this. Companies could use formally verified crypto and such to provably and completely lock out users by destroying all means of circumvention. In that sense, I think these secure technologies are like nuclear weapons --- extremely powerful, too powerful. Society in general seems to rely on some insecurity to maintain its freedom; so I believe anyone who advocates for more secure systems should also carefully consider all the negative effects which will appear if their vision comes true, and whether they are, however indirectly, locking themselves out.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  That first thing you said was what Trusted Computing Group was all about but with whitelisting & chips instead of perfect crypto. Such things were fought well but App Stores succeeded. For "security" reasons, hardware support will show up in products that incidentally reinforce the DRM parts. Good news is vendors keep differentiating on increased control of product & ASIC costs means there's usually debug hardware in it to tap into. ;)
throwaway_jddev 9y ago
Hey all, I worked on software for John Deere. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Opinions expressed here are MY OWN. I no longer work for John Deere or am associated with them in any way. I was part of one of the many teams that work on this software. Specifically I was part of John Deere's ISG division also known as the Intelligent Solutions Group. The ISG division (was at the time) responsible for tying together various software built by OEM's, for building the central UI within the cabin, and for building various debugging and build tools. The team I was on, consisted of about 8 very senior engineers, and I think there were around 20 total engineers working for ISG at the time (though I saw, and knew only a handful of them). Now, when I say OEM integration, I mean suppliers and other John Deere divisions with their own teams mirroring ours. All told, I would estimate that John Deere has somewhere between 150-300 engineers working full-time on their codebase for their tractors. Let me disabuse you of any myths. I have worked in software for 20 years. I have worked in large enterprises, and scrappy startups. This software is by FAR the largest, most complex codebase I have ever interacted with. Submission of any new code was seriously considered and reviewed before it entered production (sometimes to a pedantic degree), after which JD put all new code through 10s of thousands of hours of testing on production equipment. Production and release cycles take on the order of months to ensure that we don't kill people. These are not riding lawnmowers. They are 30-ton combines, and 20 ton tractors tilling fields, with massive horsepower behind them. They have a real potential to end peoples lives in the event of failure, and these tractors do (in testing) fail in spectacular ways. If a team of hundred of engineers struggle with their codebase internally, Joe Farmer isn't going to have a fucking clue how to repair their software correctly. Now should you, in theory, have the right to modify equipment you own? Sure. Absolutely. Hell, John Deere tractors run on open source software. But trust me on this, locking this down is a very good idea. If you have the drive to make open source tractor software AND can make absolutely certain no-one ever dies from code you write, then go do it. Just keep in mind that the engineers that work on this shit really care about keeping people safe.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  Don't try to bullshit us. Your code is deliberately user-hostile. Farmers aren't trying to hack their tractors for the sake of it; they need to hack the parts of your code that prevent them from performing routine maintenance. Replacing a fuel pump is not going to turn a tractor into a rampaging death machine. You are using spurious safety arguments to justify profiteering. Software lock-outs are being used to prop up a business model, just like the chips in printer ink cartridges.
arkis22 9y ago
Everybody likes to feel taken advantage of. If I was a business owner or engineer that built systems this complex and you asked me to not lock it down, I'd call you freaking crazy. These are very expensive and complex machines, and you want my competition or some farmer who has no idea what he's doing to access and modify it? No thank you. Google keeps proprietary code. And that's for auto complete...
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  You address two different issues here competition and users. In the case of users you have no right after sale to feel a right to control how your users make use of your product. Just because software and contracts give you two venues to potentially do so doesn't mean it would be rational to allow you to. The world is 99.99% users. On the second point, competition has always quite legally taken apart the competitors products to see how they tick. If you have something truly innovative you can file a patent, if not then you have nothing that deserves protection.
  - arkis22 9y ago
    No, In this case I have complete right to control how my users make use of my product because we agreed to it. It might not be rational because I might lose to an open competitor, but that's a completely different subject. There's trade secrets at every company in existence that they don't share with their competition. They can't patent them, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve protection. Companies exist because they don't give up how they work to their competition...
    - michaelmrose 9y ago
      Properly we limit what you are allowed to contract away all the time. This isnt any different. You want to retain control see leasing. Regarding trade secrets you misunderstand them. Please see https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/trade_secret https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/trade_secret The Uniform Trade Secrets Act ("UTSA") defines a trade secret as: information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to or readily ascertainable through appropriate means by other persons who might obtain economic value from its disclosure or use; and is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy There are two basic situations in which obtaining the use of a trade secret is illegal; where it is acquired through improper means, or where it involves a breach of confidence. Trade secrets may be obtained by lawful means such as independent discovery, reverse engineering, and inadvertent disclosure resulting from the trade secret holder's failure to take reasonable protective measures. Anything that can be gleaned from tearing your product to pieces that isn't suitable for patenting gets zero protection.
kccqzy 9y ago
This really reminds me of how Richard Stallman started GNU. It was because he can't modify the software on a printer he uses.
- laughingman2 9y ago
  And the Pro-corporate shills would say "What if he made printer into a ink bomb? we should respect the right of manufacturer to offer printer as a service". This kind of blind slavery to ideology of blind market instead of intelligent systems to provide the best outcomes in a information era is only setting back innovation. All software should be free as in freedom of speech at the very least. And I say as automation progresses, and material needs of society can be fulfilled freely, it should also be free as in free beer.
soheil 9y ago
Imagine not so long in the future if self-driving cars were forced to reveal their code because of the right-to-repair bill, 1. who without a vast depth of knowledge in C++, etc. would be able to go anywhere near it? 2. even if they did is it in their best interest or anyone else's if they tinker with the code and made the car take undesirable actions? Maybe buying a tractor should be replaced with leasing tractors, if they never want you to fully own everything in it. I think very soon there will be more and more of a need for a new way to determine what products are allowed to be sold partially with a secret OEM key.
- simplytoofast 9y ago
  Well, modification of certain software systems could be easily regulated. Even now you can't just modify all the mechanical parts of your car. For example, if you remove or bypass your catalytic converter, you can be fined $2,500-200,000 and charged with a felony. There's also a provision for any citizen to sue you into compliance if they know you've done it. Doubt that happens much, but if you ever became someone the gov't doesn't like, they can probably just go see if your muffler is up to code. Or any of the million other felonies you might be unknowingly committing due to the expansion of federal regulations.
- kodfodrasz 9y ago
  They lock down the software in their well understood interests: - vendor lock in (this is not good for customers) - safety (testing this stuff is expesive and lengthy. Every change forces a re-test. They are liable for this stuff) - defending the brand value (if there is an accident because of modified software non-hackers will blame the manufacturer for making it possible) This all weill get worse with neural networks: Imagine people poking around bits in the matrix representing the neural network of the sel-driving AI. They will not have the slightest clue what they are doing, but they don't want their System to be locked down. They download "steering optimizers" and similar stuff from sites and overwrite the neural network. Who will be to blame for the accident because of this? With neural networks even the manufacturer cannot completely understand every nauron's effect on the complete system, as opposed to traditional software. Manufacturers have huge responsibility, and curently only locking software down is their only way to defend themselves.
intrasight 9y ago
While this is a fascinating question in the context of tractors, it gets even more interesting in the context of cars, houses, personal electronics, light bulbs. The First Sale Doctrine is being eroded by DRM.
- bbarn 9y ago
  The problem with DRM is the early internet era community wasted all of its screaming and yelling about stealing movies and MP3's, and now anytime you mention DRM in a context that matters like those, it's ignored.
  - intrasight 9y ago
    I really should have said "is being eroded by DMCA"
intrasight 9y ago
The jet engines in a modern airplane have some analogies here. You can think of an engine as a PaaS (Propulsion-as-a-Service). A tractor is HaaS (Harvesting-as-a-Service). Our technologies have reach this level of complexity - the must be offered as a service. Cars will soon be Mobility-as-a-Service. Putting on my economist hat, I'd say that it is the ultimate manifestation of "comparative advantage". If JD abuses their monopoly position, then fix that through the courts and legislation, or by buying a competitors product. Don't try to hack the terms of service. But JD and other "product" vendors need to make it clear that they are in fact selling a service.
- ericd 9y ago
  Many people do not want to buy things as a service, they want to buy and own something that was built correctly the first time, and if not, is supported for the reasonable lifetime of the product for the cost stated upfront, and can be supported by people outside the company out of their pocket after that. This as a service model is not inherent to the complexity, it's usually a cash grab.
  - intrasight 9y ago
    But in an open capitalists society, such rent-seeking will be resisted by the market and by the law. A vendor has every right to make their offering a service. Unless, of course, they are abusing their monopoly position. IBM was taken to court for this in 1969.
    - laughingman2 9y ago
      Heil Market!
nottorp 9y ago
I don't get why all this chat is about software, licensing and software safety. The way I read it, a farmer can't change even, say, a brake pad (or whatever tractors use) without authorization from John Deere. I very strongly doubt that they want to mess with the software, they just want to perform minor maintenance themselves.
- weberc2 9y ago
  Some farmers want to change engine curve profiles to get more power out of their engines, likely at the expense of Tier IV emissions regulations and possibly damaging the drivetrain. I don't believe this is the normal case, but I have heard this expressed in the past.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    This does seems to be John Deere's primary motivation. They make the exact same mechanical machine to serve many different market segments, and then assign each model's capabilities, like horsepower, in software. Of course, the consumer soon figures out that by flipping a couple of bits they can buy the less expensive machine and upgrade it at little to no cost. Thus ensues the debate of who owns the tractor.
    - qb45 9y ago
      > They make the exact same mechanical machine to serve many different market segments Do you know that they do? Parent only talked about running the machine out of spec altogether but your theory could explain a few things if it's true.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        I used to work in John Deere Power Systems. The parameterization exists to allow Deere to sell their engines all over the world (different emissions regulations), to a variety of different equipment manufacturers (barges have different power requirements than tractors than cranes than etc). I'm not aware of any "pay to unlock more power" schemes, but I also wasn't particularly attentive toward pricing.
peter_retief 9y ago
This seems to be a regular way to lock in customers, I think of ink jet cartridges and even 3d printer refills use similar tricks. I wonder if there is a case to be made in making this illegal or optional
peter_retief 9y ago
This seems to be a regular way to lock in customers, I think of ink jet cartridges and even 3d printer refills use similar tricks. I wonder if there is a case to be made in making this illegal or optional
squarefoot 9y ago
SmartTV and other appliances are closed too, so that users must purchase a new one when for example codecs become obsolete. Sadly, the closed source model is not just being used where there are safety concerns involved.
andai 9y ago
Can someone please explain what software has to do with repairing a tractor? Edit: it looks like the physical components themselves are DRMed? Wtf?
jaclaz 9y ago
I have the feeling that somehow the actual need has been put aside for phylosophical (or Open Source, etc.) reasonings (nice but not the original issue). More or less what the good farmers are asking for (which is not about the code, the kernel or whatever, they are not "hackers" as much as the authorized JD technicians are not computer experts or programmers or software engineers) is just access to the "database" of parts serial number of the machine. Loosely the way it works (simplified) is a database where the (say) pressure sensor #42 has been registered (authorized) in the operating system as having serial number #0123456789. When the sensor breaks, after it has been replaced with a new (original or verified third party) sensor, you need to update the database telling it that sensor with serial #0123456789 has bee replaced with sensor serial number #2223334445 and - of course it depends on the specific part - possibly run a "self-test" program to verify that the sensor works properly and maybe tune/regulate it. The farmers do not want the source code, they don't want to modify it, they don't want to "hack" anything, they simply want to be able to replace a part and have the thingy work. Going back to software, let's talk of - say - Windows 7 (yeah I know that all the rage is about Windows 10 nowadays) and its activation, imagine that instead of having one month time to activate a new install either through the internet, the automated phone call in case it doesn't work and a support phone call for particular cases where the previous two options do not work, activation was: 1) Immediately mandatory (i.e. the OS wouldn't work until activated) 2) ONLY available through a local visit of a MS agent (9 to 5 , Monday to Friday) at a cost of (say) US$ 100.00/hour + US$ 1.00/mile
- mirimir 9y ago
  More like this, following your example. Install a new video card. Windows won't boot until a certified tech comes by, at $100/hour and $1/mile.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Yes, exactly. And of course you are replacing that video card not because you just fancy it, but because the video card in your 24/7 vital/mission critical PC just burned (and this kind of things - from experience - tend to happen between friday 11:00 PM and saturday 3:00 AM ;))
ivanhoe 9y ago
Couldn't they organize and sue the manufacturer for their losses due to the tractor malfunctions in critical periods and being prevented to service them promptly? I understand it's a bit naive, but you don't solve this by hacking around the problem, but by attacking the problem through the institutions of the system.
kvncombo 9y ago
The big boys have obviously cornered the market. Is there any farming equipment company that provides more open access for maintenance and repairs? If not, why not? It seems there is an opportunity there.

428 points by pak 9y ago

I don't like the idea that we have to pass laws to force companies to make a better product. Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Barriers to entry + capital costs.
X86BSD 9y ago
Liability laws are in dire need in the software industry. Security for instance would not be such an abysmal disaster if companies were held liable for the insecure garbage they are pumping out.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Indeed. No one should hire a programmer except that they be licensed and bonded, just like any other form of skilled labor. Users of software developed by unlicensed programmers should also be held liable if their machines should be compromised and used in a botnet or other malicious activity. That means no Linux or, in your case, BSD.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Just attach liability to a sale taking place.
digitalzombie 9y ago
> Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this? You make it sounds so easy to start a tractor company.
- notliketherest 9y ago
  The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. By your logic your statement could just have easily as been "to start a car company" or "to start a rocket company" or "to start a computer company". These are all examples of industries whose existing players were supplanted by a better idea with smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    > The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. Just two words, capital costs, suffice to throw that entire line of thought to the ground.
    - cmurf 9y ago
      It's a huge barrier to market entry effectively making for a natural monopoly. In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar and they don't have that much overlap product wise these days. If you go through the long list of farming equipment companies, they're all gone now. Defunct, or conglomeration.
      - pacaro 9y ago
        At some point anti-trust should kick in, regardless of the origin of the monopoly, the theory behind anti-trust is to protect the consumer
      - randomdata 9y ago
        > In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar Caterpillar? In agriculture? Do you mean Challenger (AGCO) or CLAAS, both of whom have used Caterpillar branding at points in the past? Although neither of them have recently. Curiously, you're the second person to have mentioned Caterpillar being involved in agriculture in this discussion. Which surprises me. They are not a player at all, outside of some overlap use of their industrial products (skidsteers, payloaders, etc.)
thearn4 9y ago
There is a fair amount of competition in this space. Around me, I see a lot of Kubota, New Holland, etc. Not too many John Deeres actually.
- froindt 9y ago
  > Around me, I see a lot of Kubota, New Holland, etc. Not too many John Deeres actually. Around Iowa I see these brands as well, but I don't see Kubota and New Holland as being as massive and innovative as Deere and Cat are/can be. John Deere has been notorious in the legal system in its pursuit of these locks on software. They have very good autonomy software which gets better every season, and distinguishes them from Kubota and New Holland. Their autonomy seems to be up-and-coming, but isn't in primetime just yet. What area of the country are you in? I wonder if it is more of a geographic difference in brand choice, or if John Deere doesn't handle the local crops in your area as well.
  - cc439 9y ago
    Kubota and New Holland dominate the southeast in my experience. I've even seen several John Deere dealers convert over to other lines recently.
  - thearn4 9y ago
    I'm in N.E. Ohio, just outside the Cleveland metro area. The croplands here aren't at large as what you'd see in central OH, but plot sizes of around a hundred acres aren't too hard to spot. That's a good point that autonomy could be a big deal for some consumers, and I bet larger plot size is a factor in that.
    - froindt 9y ago
      It's definitely easier with a large plot of land. Iowa is largely setup on a 1 mile by 1 mile grid of roads, making plots of 640 acres. I don't know if the grid of gravel roads is common or not. I've heard of John Deere being able to stay within about an inch of the previously traveled path on subsequent passes through the field. "Guaranteeing" you won't drive over previously planted crops and being able to customize the spraying, doing most driving autonomously,and collect yield per acre in real-time during harvesting, etc. make it a compelling solution out here.
cc439 9y ago
"Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this?" They are, that's why companies like Kubota are expanding their US-based manufacturing capacity like crazy. Capital equipment like a Harvester or practically anything above credit card expense level industrial equipment is purchased on a "make or break" level of decision making. Brand inertia can only carry a company like John Deere so long before the competition eats their lunch. Remember, this is a recent (past ~5 years) development in a market where equipment is expected to last ~10 years or longer. The next time these farmers decide to buy a piece of capital equipment, I guarantee they buy the unrestricted option.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
You must not know any farmers or ranchers. John Deere gets more love than Ford, Chevy, and Dodge combined. I haven't ever met someone who has sat in a tractor without a positive opinion of this company. Agriculture is a very technical industry, so most of these people are quite well-educated, but that education doesn't usually include software. As soon as someone in this field wraps their head around DRM and its consequences, they are likely to fight it hard, but getting to that point takes a little more explanation than it does for you or me. In the grand scheme of things, at least in the short term, advertising "no DRM" isn't likely to make a dent in John Deere's market share.
- obsurveyor 9y ago
  > I haven't ever met someone who has sat in a tractor without a positive opinion of this company. Then you must not know very many farmers or ranchers because Case IH(formerly International) vs. Deere is a very big thing in those circles. It is very much a rivalry with typically no overlap much like the Ford/Chevy/Dodge rivalries.

shawn-butler 9y ago

The motherboard/vice article NPR is blatantly ripping off here is much better in my opinion. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farm...

itchyjunk 9y ago

"farmers could damage the machines, like bypassing pollution emissions controls to get more horsepower." Isn't this the problem with warranties? People could try to mod it, end up damaging it and try to get it replaced with warranties. I also don't fully understand this software. Is it just completely vendor locked? That sounds really unreasonable. It should allow for at least basic debugging and trouble shooting. Is this software locking only in large $100k + harvester type equipment? Does the vendor have other reasonable explanation of doing this? I wonder if the software designer for this equipments would have reasonable arguments for such locks or if this is just profit driven decision.

Laforet 9y ago
It is usually 100% proprietary, think of iOS devices and game consoles
R_haterade 9y ago
Can confirm it's usually proprietary and locked. An old roommate is employed by an implement manufacturer--his sole job is traveling the western united states, making housecalls to upload newer versions of control software to equipment. They absolutely DO NOT trust the owners to do it themselves. This has pretty frightening implications for the state of consumer goods, if industrial goods are already going this direction.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Consumer electronics have been disposable for 25 years now. You don't exactly see an electronics repair shop in every town anymore.
  - fineline 9y ago
    Or even basic electrical appliances. I have a toaster, a kettle and a vacuum which are all bricked because of peripheral failures - two poorly (deliberately..?) designed mechanical switches and a charger - which in many cases would cause the whole otherwise functional appliance to be junked. Only somewhat resourceful and stubborn folk like myself bother to fix these things themselves.

douche 9y ago

There's going to be a huge market in used pre-DRM heavy machinery. The purely mechanical/hydraulic versions of this stuff is virtually indestructible, with a little maintenance.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
People buy software-controlled tractors in the first place because they really want the software functions. If purely mechanical versions could fill the same need, DRMed tractors would never have sold to begin with.
randomdata 9y ago
I'll gladly pay the cost of a John Deere mechanic from time to time before I go back to the purely mechanical tractors we used to have on the farm. When I hear this kind of comment I have to wonder if: 1. The person has never spent time in a tractor. 2. Has never spent time in a modern tractor. 3. Has never spent time in an old tractor.
- anjc 9y ago
  What're the benefits of newer models in terms of daily usage?
  - randomdata 9y ago
    Comfort. In the grain business my tractors don't get anywhere near daily usage, but when their window of usefulness opens, the days are long and the longer you can handle keeping the machine rolling the better. Not all of the advancements are directly related to computers, but they sort of come part and parcel at this point.
    - anjc 9y ago
      Gotcha, thanks

tim333 9y ago

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 (177 comments)

notliketherest 9y ago

When we buy a piece of software, we own and "physically" posses a binary which we feel we can rightly take apart, modify, and mess with it because we view it as analogous to owning a toaster or stereo in the physical world. It's in our home, we can touch it, and we in essence control it. Now the same is never said for software as a service. We buy subscriptions to services all the time but don't demand an ability to modify or control the software. It's defined in our agreement. Now it seems to me that the companies that sell these tractors have decided to pursue a model by which their software is more or less SaSS (providing encrypted updates over the air). Why is it that these farmers believe they have a right to modify that software?

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Because software as a service is the wrong model for farmers. When equipment breaks in the middle of the field during harvest you do what needs to be done to fix it right then and there. Edit: grammar
- cmurf 9y ago
  I'd have less of a problem with this if it were a free and open source license, and therefore there's competition available for the service, including do it yourself service should you choose. But most farms are now corporate so it sorta makes sense those types will drive this kind of closed loop proprietary fixed cost maintenance model.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    That's a good point. If they're corporate and the tractor driver is paid by the hour then the pressure to fix isn't there. Though I suspect a corporate farm would contract out harvesting so they pay a fixed cost per unit-area, and now the contractor is under pressure to fix asap.
byebyetech 9y ago
Except farmers or any customer who buys physical product are under no obligation to understand or believe there is Software that is running the Physical product they purchased. If i buy a physical product i should be able to control it completely, unless i am not buying a physical product but a service that happen to be physical, in which case seller must own all responsibility of its performance in the field.

cmurf 9y ago

Among the most successful cars were those with straightforward replacement parts, a defacto standard, and reasonably well documented and available maintenance manuals. Tesla wants control over this, by literally renting the maintenance manual, and remotely disabling the car if repairs or parts aren't authorized. I don't expect the model 3 market will appreciate this business model. It will be a much more price sensitive market compared to the early models which has been relatively inelastic for repairs and resale. Consider the x86 computer market, if every component had signed firmware, and the main system verified this signature in case of component replacement, and would fail to function at all if signature verification failed. What a pain... Consider voting machines, proprietary hardware, expensive to design, maintain, audit, and go obsolete in as few as 1/2 dozen uses. Compare that to pencil and paper. The older I get the more Darth Vader I become: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." (Let's say the Force is common sense in this metaphor.)

arca_vorago 9y ago

I wonder, is the a GPL tractor software project out there yet?

kolokolo 9y ago
So, we have: 1) Blackbox on-board computers, probably dozens of subtle configuration variations 2) Blackbox binary-only, possibly obfuscated firmware 3) Possibly TiVo-ized runtime. 4) Farmers as the ones who'd possibly be interested. 5) Then, manufacturers could sue for various DMCA violations I'd say the odds of this happening would be some 1e-3 a year. This is a policy issue that shouldn't be attacked technically. Better get the farmer write their Congress members.
dark_star 9y ago
I don't know, but there is an open source tractor design: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac Primitive but think of Linux when it was released. It's part of the Global Village Construction Set, open source machines that could make up the technological basis for a civilization: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...
- sleepychu 9y ago
  Is it self bootstrapping?

TaylorAlexander 9y ago

I think we'd all be better off if basically everything was open source, by way of eliminating intellectual property protections provided by governments. As an alternate solution, those of us with engineering skills can work to create an open source economy with open source factories, computers, and products. This would never be a problem nor would it be likely to happen if genuinely competitive options existed for farmers that were not locked down. Another way we in this community can help is by helping smaller businesses learn the value of open source and get them using and creating it. I believe with a sufficiently open source base in our economy, we can make great headway into eliminating material poverty. I write a little about this on my personal site, here: http://tlalexander.com/machine/ http://tlalexander.com/machine/

Consultant32452 9y ago
I wonder how much more the bunghole of the RIAA/MPAA would tighten up with DRM if it wasn't even illegal to copy stuff they publish with reckless regard. You'd basically have to outlaw DRM too, or everyone would just make their stuff unusable/uncopyable.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  If DRM became illegal to even attempt, they'd have a brief period of panic followed by a nice jump in profit when they finally realize they've been wasting bunghole loads of dollars applying DRM to stuff for no reason.
- problems 9y ago
  Hah, are you kidding? Even the most advanced VM based protections are routinely bypassed by crackers. Things which have an analog hole vulnerability are just too easy. The only way something like that would happen is a big shift in hardware towards tamper resistant stuff with hardware crypto. And if all the RE work on that tamper resistant hardware could be done in public things would get... very fun.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago

tbyehl 9y ago

I'm starting to wonder if these articles are driven by a PR firm paid by John Deere's competition. They're always about John Deere and only John Deere. Aside from the Motherboard / Vice article, they never provide any specifics about the maintenance or repair operations that farms are prevented from doing on their own. With the Vice article, 2 of the 3 things they mention are modifying the tractors to operate in ways the manufacturer did not intend which could result in damage.

ebbv 9y ago
I've had the same thought. It's such a niche issue and really it's incredibly standard for any kind of business hardware, which is what tractors are. Also nobody's being forced to buy new tractors, there's tons of old tractors still out and running and working every day. So why do these articles appear with such regularity? (To be clear I think that all software should be open source and vendors should charge for support, but that's beside the point here.)
- tmnvix 9y ago
  > Also nobody's being forced to buy new tractors, there's tons of old tractors still out and running and working every day. There are also fewer every day.
  - ebbv 9y ago
    It's true but I would wager independent farmers are more likely to repair and keep old tractors around, or buy used when they do have to buy one. I bet the biggest buyer of new tractors are the farming conglomerates, and I wonder if they're behind these articles. Trying to get a grass roots movement going to push John Deere to change these practices?
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    You'd be surprised how long old, robust vehicles live for. I don't have any clear data for tractors, but older trucks that can be repaired with minimum tooling get used and re-used in places in Africa, almost to no end.

known 9y ago

And https://www.iphoneasyunlock.com/ https://www.iphoneasyunlock.com/

mabbo 9y ago

It's not just the farmer paying for this: it's everyone who eats food. The time wasted is lost productivity. The extra fees just for a software unlock is lost money. The farmer has to either charge more, or go out of business sooner. Either way, the cost of food rises.

kodfodrasz 9y ago
The only problems is that the creators of those software did not get their food and tools for free. Was that also lost productivity? Maybe we could fix it by giving everything for free!

watertom 9y ago

What's ironic is most of these farmers are republicans and voted in the people who enable this crap.

swanson 9y ago

It seems so unbelievable to me that there are enough people that are a) John Deere equipment owners/renters and b) capable of debugging and patching issues in a C++ codebase for these stories to keep appearing. Debates on the virtues of open source aside, is this actually the solution? Or is it a symptom of, say, poor quality software releases? or service visits that are too costly? or overloaded dealers who can't handle harvest-time support loads? I just don't believe that allowing people to tinker with the software is going to be the magic answer that these folks seem to think it is.

userbinator 9y ago
You underestimate the resourcefulness of farmers and the tenacity of reverse-engineers. To those who do it, I bet this is a lot more fun than cracking simple licensing protections on a software.
randomdata 9y ago
As a software developer and farmer (and owner of some John Deere equipment), it doesn't seem that unbelievable to me. I know quite a few farmers who also work in tech. The capital intensive nature of the business means that many come from other high paying professions, of which tech jobs tend to be among, to support the habit. Although from everything I have read on the subject, source code does not really seem to be what people are after. They just want to have equal access to manuals and tools that the authorized dealers have. The guy in the service truck isn't modifying source code either.
yorwba 9y ago
> It seems so unbelievable to me that there are enough people that are a) John Deere equipment owners/renters and b) capable of debugging and patching issues in a C++ codebase for these stories to keep appearing. There doesn't have to be any overlap between these groups of people. The issue here seems to be that some mechanical parts that are easily replaced, are not accepted by the controlling computer, unless it is authorized using specific administration software. Basically, ink cartridge lock-in, but for tractors. To circumvent the restrictions, no farmer has to know C++, they only need a pirated version of the software to integrate the replacement parts into the system. So what the farmers want is not the ability to arbitrarily modify the software running on their equipment, but simply a way to do purely mechanical repairs on their own.

Sytten 9y ago

My dad is a farmer and I can assure you that this is a real problem. Every piece of equipment now as its own proprietary, closed-source and, most of the time, incompatible software. Plus, many of them don't get any update after the product launch. When you are in rush to plant or harvest you just can`t afford to wait for an authorized dealer. And if they fail, good luck trying to find a replacement that is not 100x overpriced because it has been discontinued one year after you bought it. I tried repairing a GPS system once and it required a special serial cable + software which costed more than 100$ just to update the driver...

swampthinker 9y ago
Sounds like an opportunity...
- pavement 9y ago
  ...for famine.
- pjc50 9y ago
  .. to get sued for patent infringement. Or DMCA violation.
  - keyme 9y ago
    This is interoperability. At the very least this is a gray area.
    - acdha 9y ago
      Those are potentially why the lawsuit would fail if you're lucky. You'd still have to fight it at ruinous cost for a small business – and expect customers to disappear if there's any chance they'd be included.
    - criddell 9y ago
      This seems exactly like the type of situation for which the Librarian of Congress would carve out a DMCA exemption.

userbinator 9y ago

Every time I read or hear about new developments in creating safer/more secure software, I am reminded of scenarios like this. Companies could use formally verified crypto and such to provably and completely lock out users by destroying all means of circumvention. In that sense, I think these secure technologies are like nuclear weapons --- extremely powerful, too powerful. Society in general seems to rely on some insecurity to maintain its freedom; so I believe anyone who advocates for more secure systems should also carefully consider all the negative effects which will appear if their vision comes true, and whether they are, however indirectly, locking themselves out.

nickpsecurity 9y ago
That first thing you said was what Trusted Computing Group was all about but with whitelisting & chips instead of perfect crypto. Such things were fought well but App Stores succeeded. For "security" reasons, hardware support will show up in products that incidentally reinforce the DRM parts. Good news is vendors keep differentiating on increased control of product & ASIC costs means there's usually debug hardware in it to tap into. ;)

throwaway_jddev 9y ago

Hey all, I worked on software for John Deere. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Opinions expressed here are MY OWN. I no longer work for John Deere or am associated with them in any way. I was part of one of the many teams that work on this software. Specifically I was part of John Deere's ISG division also known as the Intelligent Solutions Group. The ISG division (was at the time) responsible for tying together various software built by OEM's, for building the central UI within the cabin, and for building various debugging and build tools. The team I was on, consisted of about 8 very senior engineers, and I think there were around 20 total engineers working for ISG at the time (though I saw, and knew only a handful of them). Now, when I say OEM integration, I mean suppliers and other John Deere divisions with their own teams mirroring ours. All told, I would estimate that John Deere has somewhere between 150-300 engineers working full-time on their codebase for their tractors. Let me disabuse you of any myths. I have worked in software for 20 years. I have worked in large enterprises, and scrappy startups. This software is by FAR the largest, most complex codebase I have ever interacted with. Submission of any new code was seriously considered and reviewed before it entered production (sometimes to a pedantic degree), after which JD put all new code through 10s of thousands of hours of testing on production equipment. Production and release cycles take on the order of months to ensure that we don't kill people. These are not riding lawnmowers. They are 30-ton combines, and 20 ton tractors tilling fields, with massive horsepower behind them. They have a real potential to end peoples lives in the event of failure, and these tractors do (in testing) fail in spectacular ways. If a team of hundred of engineers struggle with their codebase internally, Joe Farmer isn't going to have a fucking clue how to repair their software correctly. Now should you, in theory, have the right to modify equipment you own? Sure. Absolutely. Hell, John Deere tractors run on open source software. But trust me on this, locking this down is a very good idea. If you have the drive to make open source tractor software AND can make absolutely certain no-one ever dies from code you write, then go do it. Just keep in mind that the engineers that work on this shit really care about keeping people safe.

jdietrich 9y ago
Don't try to bullshit us. Your code is deliberately user-hostile. Farmers aren't trying to hack their tractors for the sake of it; they need to hack the parts of your code that prevent them from performing routine maintenance. Replacing a fuel pump is not going to turn a tractor into a rampaging death machine. You are using spurious safety arguments to justify profiteering. Software lock-outs are being used to prop up a business model, just like the chips in printer ink cartridges.

arkis22 9y ago

Everybody likes to feel taken advantage of. If I was a business owner or engineer that built systems this complex and you asked me to not lock it down, I'd call you freaking crazy. These are very expensive and complex machines, and you want my competition or some farmer who has no idea what he's doing to access and modify it? No thank you. Google keeps proprietary code. And that's for auto complete...

michaelmrose 9y ago
You address two different issues here competition and users. In the case of users you have no right after sale to feel a right to control how your users make use of your product. Just because software and contracts give you two venues to potentially do so doesn't mean it would be rational to allow you to. The world is 99.99% users. On the second point, competition has always quite legally taken apart the competitors products to see how they tick. If you have something truly innovative you can file a patent, if not then you have nothing that deserves protection.
- arkis22 9y ago
  No, In this case I have complete right to control how my users make use of my product because we agreed to it. It might not be rational because I might lose to an open competitor, but that's a completely different subject. There's trade secrets at every company in existence that they don't share with their competition. They can't patent them, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve protection. Companies exist because they don't give up how they work to their competition...
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Properly we limit what you are allowed to contract away all the time. This isnt any different. You want to retain control see leasing. Regarding trade secrets you misunderstand them. Please see https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/trade_secret https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/trade_secret The Uniform Trade Secrets Act ("UTSA") defines a trade secret as: information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to or readily ascertainable through appropriate means by other persons who might obtain economic value from its disclosure or use; and is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy There are two basic situations in which obtaining the use of a trade secret is illegal; where it is acquired through improper means, or where it involves a breach of confidence. Trade secrets may be obtained by lawful means such as independent discovery, reverse engineering, and inadvertent disclosure resulting from the trade secret holder's failure to take reasonable protective measures. Anything that can be gleaned from tearing your product to pieces that isn't suitable for patenting gets zero protection.

kccqzy 9y ago

This really reminds me of how Richard Stallman started GNU. It was because he can't modify the software on a printer he uses.

laughingman2 9y ago
And the Pro-corporate shills would say "What if he made printer into a ink bomb? we should respect the right of manufacturer to offer printer as a service". This kind of blind slavery to ideology of blind market instead of intelligent systems to provide the best outcomes in a information era is only setting back innovation. All software should be free as in freedom of speech at the very least. And I say as automation progresses, and material needs of society can be fulfilled freely, it should also be free as in free beer.

soheil 9y ago

Imagine not so long in the future if self-driving cars were forced to reveal their code because of the right-to-repair bill, 1. who without a vast depth of knowledge in C++, etc. would be able to go anywhere near it? 2. even if they did is it in their best interest or anyone else's if they tinker with the code and made the car take undesirable actions? Maybe buying a tractor should be replaced with leasing tractors, if they never want you to fully own everything in it. I think very soon there will be more and more of a need for a new way to determine what products are allowed to be sold partially with a secret OEM key.

simplytoofast 9y ago
Well, modification of certain software systems could be easily regulated. Even now you can't just modify all the mechanical parts of your car. For example, if you remove or bypass your catalytic converter, you can be fined $2,500-200,000 and charged with a felony. There's also a provision for any citizen to sue you into compliance if they know you've done it. Doubt that happens much, but if you ever became someone the gov't doesn't like, they can probably just go see if your muffler is up to code. Or any of the million other felonies you might be unknowingly committing due to the expansion of federal regulations.
kodfodrasz 9y ago
They lock down the software in their well understood interests: - vendor lock in (this is not good for customers) - safety (testing this stuff is expesive and lengthy. Every change forces a re-test. They are liable for this stuff) - defending the brand value (if there is an accident because of modified software non-hackers will blame the manufacturer for making it possible) This all weill get worse with neural networks: Imagine people poking around bits in the matrix representing the neural network of the sel-driving AI. They will not have the slightest clue what they are doing, but they don't want their System to be locked down. They download "steering optimizers" and similar stuff from sites and overwrite the neural network. Who will be to blame for the accident because of this? With neural networks even the manufacturer cannot completely understand every nauron's effect on the complete system, as opposed to traditional software. Manufacturers have huge responsibility, and curently only locking software down is their only way to defend themselves.

intrasight 9y ago

While this is a fascinating question in the context of tractors, it gets even more interesting in the context of cars, houses, personal electronics, light bulbs. The First Sale Doctrine is being eroded by DRM.

bbarn 9y ago
The problem with DRM is the early internet era community wasted all of its screaming and yelling about stealing movies and MP3's, and now anytime you mention DRM in a context that matters like those, it's ignored.
- intrasight 9y ago
  I really should have said "is being eroded by DMCA"

intrasight 9y ago

The jet engines in a modern airplane have some analogies here. You can think of an engine as a PaaS (Propulsion-as-a-Service). A tractor is HaaS (Harvesting-as-a-Service). Our technologies have reach this level of complexity - the must be offered as a service. Cars will soon be Mobility-as-a-Service. Putting on my economist hat, I'd say that it is the ultimate manifestation of "comparative advantage". If JD abuses their monopoly position, then fix that through the courts and legislation, or by buying a competitors product. Don't try to hack the terms of service. But JD and other "product" vendors need to make it clear that they are in fact selling a service.

ericd 9y ago
Many people do not want to buy things as a service, they want to buy and own something that was built correctly the first time, and if not, is supported for the reasonable lifetime of the product for the cost stated upfront, and can be supported by people outside the company out of their pocket after that. This as a service model is not inherent to the complexity, it's usually a cash grab.
- intrasight 9y ago
  But in an open capitalists society, such rent-seeking will be resisted by the market and by the law. A vendor has every right to make their offering a service. Unless, of course, they are abusing their monopoly position. IBM was taken to court for this in 1969.
  - laughingman2 9y ago
    Heil Market!

nottorp 9y ago

I don't get why all this chat is about software, licensing and software safety. The way I read it, a farmer can't change even, say, a brake pad (or whatever tractors use) without authorization from John Deere. I very strongly doubt that they want to mess with the software, they just want to perform minor maintenance themselves.

weberc2 9y ago
Some farmers want to change engine curve profiles to get more power out of their engines, likely at the expense of Tier IV emissions regulations and possibly damaging the drivetrain. I don't believe this is the normal case, but I have heard this expressed in the past.
- randomdata 9y ago
  This does seems to be John Deere's primary motivation. They make the exact same mechanical machine to serve many different market segments, and then assign each model's capabilities, like horsepower, in software. Of course, the consumer soon figures out that by flipping a couple of bits they can buy the less expensive machine and upgrade it at little to no cost. Thus ensues the debate of who owns the tractor.
  - qb45 9y ago
    > They make the exact same mechanical machine to serve many different market segments Do you know that they do? Parent only talked about running the machine out of spec altogether but your theory could explain a few things if it's true.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      I used to work in John Deere Power Systems. The parameterization exists to allow Deere to sell their engines all over the world (different emissions regulations), to a variety of different equipment manufacturers (barges have different power requirements than tractors than cranes than etc). I'm not aware of any "pay to unlock more power" schemes, but I also wasn't particularly attentive toward pricing.

peter_retief 9y ago

This seems to be a regular way to lock in customers, I think of ink jet cartridges and even 3d printer refills use similar tricks. I wonder if there is a case to be made in making this illegal or optional

peter_retief 9y ago

squarefoot 9y ago

SmartTV and other appliances are closed too, so that users must purchase a new one when for example codecs become obsolete. Sadly, the closed source model is not just being used where there are safety concerns involved.

andai 9y ago

Can someone please explain what software has to do with repairing a tractor? Edit: it looks like the physical components themselves are DRMed? Wtf?

jaclaz 9y ago

I have the feeling that somehow the actual need has been put aside for phylosophical (or Open Source, etc.) reasonings (nice but not the original issue). More or less what the good farmers are asking for (which is not about the code, the kernel or whatever, they are not "hackers" as much as the authorized JD technicians are not computer experts or programmers or software engineers) is just access to the "database" of parts serial number of the machine. Loosely the way it works (simplified) is a database where the (say) pressure sensor #42 has been registered (authorized) in the operating system as having serial number #0123456789. When the sensor breaks, after it has been replaced with a new (original or verified third party) sensor, you need to update the database telling it that sensor with serial #0123456789 has bee replaced with sensor serial number #2223334445 and - of course it depends on the specific part - possibly run a "self-test" program to verify that the sensor works properly and maybe tune/regulate it. The farmers do not want the source code, they don't want to modify it, they don't want to "hack" anything, they simply want to be able to replace a part and have the thingy work. Going back to software, let's talk of - say - Windows 7 (yeah I know that all the rage is about Windows 10 nowadays) and its activation, imagine that instead of having one month time to activate a new install either through the internet, the automated phone call in case it doesn't work and a support phone call for particular cases where the previous two options do not work, activation was: 1) Immediately mandatory (i.e. the OS wouldn't work until activated) 2) ONLY available through a local visit of a MS agent (9 to 5 , Monday to Friday) at a cost of (say) US$ 100.00/hour + US$ 1.00/mile

mirimir 9y ago
More like this, following your example. Install a new video card. Windows won't boot until a certified tech comes by, at $100/hour and $1/mile.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Yes, exactly. And of course you are replacing that video card not because you just fancy it, but because the video card in your 24/7 vital/mission critical PC just burned (and this kind of things - from experience - tend to happen between friday 11:00 PM and saturday 3:00 AM ;))

ivanhoe 9y ago

Couldn't they organize and sue the manufacturer for their losses due to the tractor malfunctions in critical periods and being prevented to service them promptly? I understand it's a bit naive, but you don't solve this by hacking around the problem, but by attacking the problem through the institutions of the system.

kvncombo 9y ago

The big boys have obviously cornered the market. Is there any farming equipment company that provides more open access for maintenance and repairs? If not, why not? It seems there is an opportunity there.