4 ms·

Thing is.. all this stuff communicates over CAN and if someone messes up a single value it can literally destroy the vehicle and humans. One byte off and sudden

Thing is.. all this stuff communicates over CAN and if someone messes up a single value it can literally destroy the vehicle and humans. One byte off and suddenly the wheel sensor speed overrides the engine speed and 50 other devices on the machine react accordingly .. on top of that manufactures are really system integrators most of the time and tons of code belong to downstream manufacturers.. most of the code is something you wouldn’t want outsiders to see (poorly written/documented) so as much as I am for open source and the like but the underestimation of the risk and difficulty of some random person coding to “repair” a tractor should terrify any software engineer. And yes something as simple as a grapple bucket needs proper code now. Just the way it is.

salawat 5y ago
>Thing is.. all this stuff communicates over CAN and if someone messes up a single value it can literally destroy the vehicle and humans. One byte off and suddenly the wheel sensor speed overrides the engine speed and 50 other devices on the machine react accordingly .. on top of that manufactures are really system integrators most of the time and tons of code belong to downstream manufacturers.. most of the code is something you wouldn’t want outsiders to see (poorly written/documented) so as much as I am for open source and the like but the underestimation of the risk and difficulty of some random person coding to “repair” a tractor should terrify any software engineer. Bullshit. This is digital logic. One bit off can destroy anything. We don't lock all software behind lock and key because digital logic is digital logic. Yeah. It's a tractor. So what? One bit off and disk firmware can spin up out of control until the platter shatters, controller overvolts/heats. One bit off and a plane can fly itself into the ground. A race condition and an X-ray fires a lethal beam of hard radiation into a patient. Programs, segfaults, symbol tables, the most mission critical software ever, gains no benefit being locked away from the public. Proprietary standards not publically accessible does nothing but internalize corruption or flaws we build into them until that rare person that can eventually mitigate or raise awareness of their implication comes along and blows the whistle. I'm tired of the platitudes and arrogance of these corporate malusers of software to manufacture nothing but artificial scarcity, malusers of lobbyists and marketing to manufacture control and credibility with which to steer the masses perception around what is a legitimate use of digital logic. We, and I mean the entirety of the tech industry need to have a moral "Come to <subject of veneratiom>", and acknowledge that by not paying attention to how our employers utilize that which we've made, we have made the world worse for everyone. I can say that that includes everything from juniors to the most crack programmer/hardware designer out there. The excuses have officially gotten intolerably old and decrepit.
mindslight 5y ago
So what you are saying is that in addition to the market destroying effects of the repair monopoly, keeping their systems closed and undocumented has also allowed for shoddy engineering practices that make for unpredictable system behavior. I used to do embedded design, and I'm well aware of many of these practices (eg zip for version control). Opening these systems up will make them drastically more robust.
- ORCByte 5y ago
  Good point. Anything is possible. Zip version control sucks and is real.
fragmede 5y ago
Which is all logical in isolation but the practical situation is during harvest season, the John Deere service center can only do so many jobs at once. When they're busy (which; they're the only one in the area authorized to work on them, so my money's on "always") then the customer just has to wait. Ever take your car in for a service and then have to get a rental because they're taking so long? Imagine if you couldn't rent a car but desperately needed it for work. The right to repair for farmers is about more than the fixing of tractors, it's about fixing tractors ASAP during harvest season when any downtime is unacceptable.

salawat 5y ago

>Thing is.. all this stuff communicates over CAN and if someone messes up a single value it can literally destroy the vehicle and humans. One byte off and suddenly the wheel sensor speed overrides the engine speed and 50 other devices on the machine react accordingly .. on top of that manufactures are really system integrators most of the time and tons of code belong to downstream manufacturers.. most of the code is something you wouldn’t want outsiders to see (poorly written/documented) so as much as I am for open source and the like but the underestimation of the risk and difficulty of some random person coding to “repair” a tractor should terrify any software engineer. Bullshit. This is digital logic. One bit off can destroy anything. We don't lock all software behind lock and key because digital logic is digital logic. Yeah. It's a tractor. So what? One bit off and disk firmware can spin up out of control until the platter shatters, controller overvolts/heats. One bit off and a plane can fly itself into the ground. A race condition and an X-ray fires a lethal beam of hard radiation into a patient. Programs, segfaults, symbol tables, the most mission critical software ever, gains no benefit being locked away from the public. Proprietary standards not publically accessible does nothing but internalize corruption or flaws we build into them until that rare person that can eventually mitigate or raise awareness of their implication comes along and blows the whistle. I'm tired of the platitudes and arrogance of these corporate malusers of software to manufacture nothing but artificial scarcity, malusers of lobbyists and marketing to manufacture control and credibility with which to steer the masses perception around what is a legitimate use of digital logic. We, and I mean the entirety of the tech industry need to have a moral "Come to <subject of veneratiom>", and acknowledge that by not paying attention to how our employers utilize that which we've made, we have made the world worse for everyone. I can say that that includes everything from juniors to the most crack programmer/hardware designer out there. The excuses have officially gotten intolerably old and decrepit.

mindslight 5y ago

So what you are saying is that in addition to the market destroying effects of the repair monopoly, keeping their systems closed and undocumented has also allowed for shoddy engineering practices that make for unpredictable system behavior. I used to do embedded design, and I'm well aware of many of these practices (eg zip for version control). Opening these systems up will make them drastically more robust.

ORCByte 5y ago
Good point. Anything is possible. Zip version control sucks and is real.

fragmede 5y ago

Which is all logical in isolation but the practical situation is during harvest season, the John Deere service center can only do so many jobs at once. When they're busy (which; they're the only one in the area authorized to work on them, so my money's on "always") then the customer just has to wait. Ever take your car in for a service and then have to get a rental because they're taking so long? Imagine if you couldn't rent a car but desperately needed it for work. The right to repair for farmers is about more than the fixing of tractors, it's about fixing tractors ASAP during harvest season when any downtime is unacceptable.