If you could explain in reasonable detail a few common scenarios faced by the average farmer with an issue that would necessitate JD engineering expertise, I wo

If you could explain in reasonable detail a few common scenarios faced by the average farmer with an issue that would necessitate JD engineering expertise, I would very much appreciate it. Specifically, I'd be interested in hearing how the repair work orders that come in to JD engineering most frequently justify the claim that 'locking this down is a very good idea'. Who, aside from the operator of the machine, is being put in such grave danger? Why am I, someone with no knowledge of combustion engines/cars in general, allowed to do my own work on the car that conceivably endangers thousands of fellow commuters each day, but a farmer driving a tractor (that lets say he's changed the engine timing on) in his own empty fields is somehow a great threat to society? I would wager that Joe Farmer has a significantly stronger 'fucking clue' how to repair the issues they encounter with their tractors than Joe Developer at John Deere. Mostly because unless they're doing an aggressively poor job on the software (that you're convinced is too complicated for the unwashed masses to wrap their feeble minds around), the farmer shouldn't even need to be aware of its existence. Additionally, I think you and I both know the vast majority of farmers adversely affected by these business practices are not dealing with 40 ton death machines, but rather the low-end John Deere products that do little more than an equivalent machine from 30 years ago could do. I'd also be interested to hear how ordinary farm machinery necessitates a codebase as complicated as you purport the JD software to be. The problems these machines have to deal with are not difficult, and were largely solved years ago. I can imagine there are some rather complicated hardware engineering efforts involved, but I'm skeptical that the software component would require anything beyond the skills of an enterprising group of skilled undergrads. I realize embedded dev work in safety critical applications is not so easy, but I nevertheless feel like you're dramatically overstating the complexity. I'm sure the engineers on these projects are veritably concerned with the safety of their customers, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. Just keep in mind the considerable imbalance of power between JD (and its engineers) and their farmer customers -- particularly in these types of debates. edit: upon reading my submission, I came off as a bit of a jerk, and for that I apologize. In my defense, before getting into the software industry, I grew up working on a farm, and as a result am a bit reactionary in the face of any sort of "I'm a big bad developer, these guys are glorified lawn mowers who need to be protected from themselves." lines of reasoning.