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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

by swanson 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.

by swanson 10y ago

userbinator 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.