I think in general companies go more and more aggressive and ruthless to remain profitable and fight opposition, that's our economy..
Sythes and oxen-drawn plows don't have any terms of service but they are not competitive these days.
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:
What I would prefer is a discounted lump sum paid out to IP owners, at the time of patent filing/copyright. For instance, instead of having to legally defend a medical patent for 20 years and overcharge hospitals/distributors during that time, receive a discounted cash flow equal to the approximate amount of value that would be forgone by pricing the innovation at competitive prices.
Of course this system isn't foolproof, and would be subject to tremendous "gaming" from patent holders and regulators, but innovators could reap the rewards of their innovative research without having to deal with pricing their products out of reach for some individuals who can't afford the price.
Again, it isn't foolproof. But there exists a "most efficient" means of balancing the risk/reward of innovation that lies somewhere between "IP rights should be forever" and "No IP at all."
Look at the 3D printer inventors from the 1980's who rested on their laurels selling $30,000 3D printers until their patents expired and the open source community started producing them for under $1000. Ten years after the patents expired, you can get a 3D printer for $199 that genuinely rivals the quality of a $30,000 printer just 10 years ago.
There are all manner of incentives for innovation and profit is only one. But locking down ideas in this way prevents others from improving on ideas, and incentivizes one-time innovators to focus on legal battles rather than continued development.
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.
© 2017 Objective Bias. All rights reserved.
With current laws, it's one reasonable way to get close to my ideals. It's the same reason why the Apache 2.0 license is against the friction caused patents by acknowledging them and addressing the issues they raise.
It's using ip law against itself (although I can't really speak for the author in this specific case).
A good compromise may be that software is only eligible for legal protections like copyright if it's source is registered with the Copyright Office, and then the scope of that copyright would limit the commercial resell for 10 years, but would not limit individual or hobbyist use or distribution.
Whatever we do, with core components of basically everything falling under copyright protection due to software, we badly need to revise the law.
There is a large body of law where we have just sloppily slapped a physical metaphor on top of the relevant technology and pretended like that was OK. We need to acknowledge that there are differences and that we need a first-class body of law to address these issues, not just loosely applied law that never could have anticipated the world as it is today.
One example: copies of content kept in RAM qualify as infringing copies under the Copyright Act. Judges have been lamenting that in their decisions since the first one, but they feel the law must be interpreted that way. This has a lot of complicated consequences, and it's just a single example of how our technology law is badly damaged and needs repair.
The biggest reason we don't get this sorely-needed legal renovation is that big companies don't want to even the playing field. They like using the law to bully small innovators.
Explain the use of "superfluous" in that sentence, please.
> One example: copies of content kept in RAM qualify as infringing copies under the Copyright Act. Judges have been lamenting that in their decisions since the first one, but they feel the law must be interpreted that way. This has a lot of complicated consequences, and it's just a single example of how our technology law is badly damaged and needs repair.
Can you give some examples of judges lamenting that?
I don't see why you think this particular thing needs repair. Generally programmers and engineers do consider a program loaded into RAM to be a copy of the program. Copyright law uses a fairly simple, common sense definition of "copy" which generally includes things that most people would consider copies. So, we end up with programs in RAM being copies of the program on disk from which they were loaded.
But we don't want running a program that you have a legitimate authorized copy of on your disk to require extra permission from the copyright owner, so we need to find a way to make doing so not count as a violation of the copyright owner's copying right.
There are two ways to do that.
One way would be to change the definition of "copy" so as to not include it.
Another way would be to add a specific limitation on the copyright owner's exclusive rights that says they are not applicable in this case.
The first approach, changing the definition of "copy", is bad. First of all, it makes the legal term "copy" further diverge from the English term "copy", and in this particular case from what programmers and engineers mean when they say "copy". Second, nearly everything in copyright law depends on knowing what a copy is, so adding complexity to the definition to deal with one special case complicates almost everything.
The second approach addresses the particular problem at hand, and does not leak complexity into other parts of the law.
We went with the second approach. See 17 USC 117, "Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs" for details.
That's the approach for most special cases in the Copyright Act. Section 101 gives broad definitions, usually reasonably well aligned to the common understanding of the terms. Section 106 gives the copyright owner certain exclusive rights. Then there are a bunch of sections that reign in those rights somewhat, for example with fair use in section 107, library use in 108, and first sale in 109.
If we tried to handle all of that by diddling with the definition of "copy" to make doing those things not involve copies the law would end up ridiculously complicated.
Imagine your employer spent a million dollars on a server that runs everything critical to their operation. You can overclock it easily. Do you?
Ok, before going a single step farther it has to be prefaced: this entire sentence is utterly non-sensical because "open source" is 100% based upon intellectual property protections provided by governments. That was the whole genius of it from the start, that it made use of existing IP law for an entirely new purpose and direction. But you can try out "eliminating IP protections" yourself right now, it's called Public Domain. Try releasing your work as that, and, should it be sufficiently popular/valuable, see exactly how long it stays "open source". No IP = no open source, because by definition with no IP anyone can take it and do whatever they want with it, including using technological rather then legal protections.
Going beyond that though, so far the people I've seen entirely reject IP don't seem to understand exactly what the IP-hack is for. The absolute core, fundamental problem is thus:
Unlike matter, the replication of information is (effectively) free, but the generation of information most certainly is not. Also unlike matter, the "protection" of information fundamentally represents a societal cost.
The result is a resource allocation problem, though with a set of collective twists. As infinite resources do not exist, and only some information is of value, it is desirable to have some way to efficiently allocate resources to the generation of "valuable" information, but then also have that provide the most efficient value and effect in society overall. Protecting information individually isn't fully possible, and any temporary ways to do so are highly inefficient to all parties. Protecting information cooperatively can be more efficient, but represents an ongoing an cumulative societal cost.
Untangling this particular Gordian Knot of conflicting priorities is tricky but also of critical importance, and I doubt we have arrived at the best solution yet. But so far Intellectual Property seems to be the best one. IP is basically a hack to try to apply Free Market mechanisms (so massively distributed value appraisal with a capital intermediary/feedback) to information generation, while (at least theoretically) taking into account the significant differences between information and physical property. This means restrictions on what exactly is worthy of IP, categories for different types of protection to address different generation issues, a crude attempt to deal with the cumulative cost issue via limited lifetimes (which has been corrupted), etc. It is unfortunately subject to all the standard problems with societal programs: regulatory capture, perverse incentives, struggling to get out of local minima that are far from absolute minima, and so on. But that some of this is a challenge doesn't mean that throwing out the baby with the bathwater is a good idea either. No matter what the information generation problem in a limited resource world is not going to go away, and a polity utilizing an inferior solution is going to be less efficient at it and thus, over time, lose out to polities that utilize IP.
So I think your efforts are much, much better focused on trying to wrest back the balance of the IP process so that the hack, however ugly, better matches the constraints. Bring back shorter time limits is an easily graspable idea, if anything modern networks and systems that drastically reduce time-to-market and distribution costs should result in a lower, not longer, lifetime. Better still would be some sort of reactive measure so that IP can more optimally respond to its value, like an exponentially increasing yearly maintenance cost after a minimum period. There are lots of different good ideas out there. But please resist blanket "easy" solutions to something that very much is not easy unless you've really thought through the universal problem space and have arguments as to why your replacement is better then the existing regime.
I also feel that at least my government (in the US) is so owned by corporations and the wealthy that it no longer represents my interests, and I tend to reject any solutions that endow in that government certain powers. As such I would disagree with intellectual property on philosophical grounds even if I didn't disagree with it on technical grounds. I simply don't think it's the government's place to attempt to fix markets in this way, and I don't want to be subject to it.
As it is, I see extreme waste in our world from intellectual property laws that ultimately send manufactured goods to the garbage dump sooner than they need be disposed of. Cars that could be repaired, if only an electronic module wasn't subject to monopoly control and unnecessarily high prices. I see poor children unable to access high quality textbooks despite the information being readily copyable. I see developing nations struggling to get on their feet while the rich nations keep their valuable knowledge to themselves.
I don't mind technological means of obfuscation, because those at least can fail. It is only the legal means of obfuscation that prevents us as humans from making every book ever written freely available to all people. I reject the idea that no one would write books in this new future, but I do understand the change would bring about great new problems that need to be solved.
But it is my life goal to find ways to reduce the marginal cost of human survival to zero, so we can care for everyone voluntarily. In order to do that, we absolutely must eliminate artificially inflated costs in that chain. That can be done voluntarily through the creation of an open commons, which I believe is more realistic, or it can be done more powerfully through the weakening and ultimate elimination of IP protection laws.
But you are correct that the real change that is needed is not an end to IP laws, but the stimulation of a culture which values sharing out of a love for one another. I believe that only a culture based on love can truly thrive.
It's this complacency, and in many cases a lack of respect, that allows this to happen. Make no mistake, they are doing great things in China right now and if western companies don't react quickly enough, their lunch will be eaten again.
What makes you think this?
Every problem's already been solved; you just don't have access to its solution. Wouldn't being able to work off of others' successes make you more productive? Doesn't that apply to everyone?
If there was no IP protection, anyone could redistribute NPR's podcasts and news articles while stripping the advertising from them. Advertisers would stop sponsoring NPR, and its budget would diminish substantially. It would stop producing quality content like this article. The ability to lawfully distribute free copies of all video games and video content would diminish their sales to a fraction of today, and shut those industries down. The only media industries left would be ones based on live performance / live display.
I'd like to retain the incentives for these creators to continue thriving by publishing good work, which means retaining these intellectual property protections. I think we can fix the problem that appears to exist in this situation in other ways, such as by strictly curtailing the rights of equipment manufacturers to restrict what purchasers can do via licenses, and by buffing the first sale doctrine to include right of repair, and perhaps creating or strengthening legal requirements that when you purchase a physical good, must not hinder the ability to repair it, and the software needed to operate the good must be included in the price and must operate (must not be intentionally time-limited) for a reasonable period of time. The duration of copyright should also be significantly reduced, to something like 20 years maximum.
Heaven forbid! :-D
I go around telling people what I think of copyright all the time, and this argument is one that I hear a lot.
But I don't buy it. The body of open source content available today is proof that your argument is at the very least incomplete. Plenty of people do give their time away for free to make better things available to people without monetary benefit.
A key to my argument is as follows: people who give away their work tend to be on the wealthier end of the spectrum with some ability to give their time away - a single mother of four who works 60 hours a week probably isn't submitting pull requests in her spare time.
So then you say I have a flaw - only wealthy people can contribute to a world without IP laws. But again I disagree. In the world without IP laws, I believe deeply that the wealth we already have would be more evenly distributed, and the floor of minimum wealth would be much higher. I think in a world without IP laws, so many people would be so much wealthier that they could afford to voluntarily support those who still cannot support themselves.
I should also point out that there's absolutely still an incentive to create things even without IP protection, so I disagree with your argument on its face. Certainly there is a greater incentive to create when creators can legally bar others from selling their works, but that does not mean the incentive without IP laws is zero. To the contrary, innovators maintain first mover advantage and are free to build brand awareness. I'd rather buy something from a creator than a copycat, since the copycat is more likely to cut corners that materially impact the quality of the offering.
On balance I believe we would see MORE wealth and more innovation without IP laws, and while I may be wrong I think it's important to question the conventional wisdom that IP laws help innovation. I think in many ways they harm it.
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
One way to fix this would be for a farmer to sue the manufacturer for business interruption for millions of dollars.
When planting or harvesting, especially when bad weather is coming in, you are on a tight deadline.
Inability to replace a perfectly functional physical part due to this kind of software lockdown could cost a farmer lots of money.
But you'd need to find a farmer who's willing to take a risk and spend a lot of money that they may not have while their crop rots in a field.
Microsoft really should adopt this approach to customer service. It's been very successful for John Deere obviously, so for MS it should be even more successful. They could increase their profitability greatly. Who cares if it pisses off customers? They're not going anywhere; they'll just pay up and gripe about it. There is literally no reason MS should not treat their customers this way. They're missing out on a lot of revenue here.
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.
Thus ensues the debate of who owns the tractor.
There was another article about this a few days ago (it's linked somewhere in one of the comments) and the basic description was "can't do any repairs in place" not "i want to overclock my engine".
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.
isn't a way to make a good argument.
From TFA "Only dealerships have the software to make those parts work, and it costs hundreds of dollars just to get a service call. Schwarting worries about being broken down in a field, waiting for a dealer to show up with a software key."
and from a comment above
"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."
the problem seems to be that the process of updating software (a) takes too long (b) is too expensive (c) sofware is not updated once the tractor has been sold.
In an ideal world, where such a break down can be instantly fixed by JD for a reasonable fee, and JD actively updates the software on the equipment they sell till End of Life, this problem wouldn't exist.
Farmers don't care about open source etc. They just want to do their jobs. I'm astounded by the fact that JD takes no responsibility for updating software till end of life of the tractor.
Can someone speak definitively about updates from JD? It would really surprise me that JD "doesn't update" their software after the sale. It's probably covered by a service contract you need to keep paying for, but I strongly suspect that they update and patch software for many, many years after the product release.
Source: I work for a certain, huge diesel manufacturer, and am starting at a slide about telematics right this very moment.
The automotive component I worked on was firmware updated every time the customer took the car to a service for eg. to change oil, and an update was necessary.
The tools needed for this were pretty expensive though, and needed some expertise, as the process was somewhat complicated. I understand why this is not trusted to owners.
> But trust me on this, locking this down is a very good idea.
Joe Farmer may not know, but Joe farmer has "the internet", and ability to pay an independent software engineer. And people would absolutely find and fix bugs that john deer is missing.
Honestly, your argument sounds so ridiculous, it sounds like saying "it's to protect the children from terrorism."
If Joe Farmer doesnt know, he will figure it out.
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.
> They have a real potential to end peoples lives in the event of failure
I hope the lessons[1] learned from the Therac-25 are part of the design. Anything that dangerous needs to have defense in depth. If there are hardware limiters, interlocks, etc adding redundancy to the software check, the risk should be no worse than repairing any other dangerous machinery. Alternatively, if John Deere is relying on the software alone for safety checks - which requires that they (and the OEMs!) write bug-free software - then I don't want to be anywhere near the affected products.
> these tractors do (in testing) fail in spectacular ways.
So it's software only. I'm amazed at the hubris of thinking it's even possible can guarantee a software project large enough to requires a couple hundred engineers that maintain "the largest, most complex codebase [you] have ever interacted with". The very existence of tests failing in "spectacular ways" is evidence that bugs do exist in the software.
> These are not riding lawnmowers.
I'm not aware of anybody that suggested they were.
> They are 30-ton combines, and 20 ton tractors tilling fields
Yes, just like the older combines and tractors that didn't require complicated software.
> Joe Farmer isn't going to have a fucking clue how to repair their software correctly.
This, really, is the key point: the farmers in question *are not trying to repair the software. The only reason it is involved at all is because John Deere the company) chose to add the dependency.
Also you're doing the unfortunate thing of associating me as part of John Deere. I'm not. I had a small hand is writing a small part of this software, a long long time ago. I don't give a shit if they sell tractors or not. I don't care if farmers modify the software or not. I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm just a guy with an opinion who's seen how the sausage is made.
Aren't there any hardware failsafes to prevent the software from controlling the machinery in an unsafe manner?
So, Im not buying it even if you worked on the team. They could design it for cheap fixes for parts easily. They could allow more extensions than they let on by turning off some automation. They are instead applying the well-tested concept of lockin both with software and their request to copyright office to make mods illegal. This is to increase profit of their near monopolistic dominance of a lot of the market (esp rural areas).
There's a software bug in one of my tractors (not John Deere) where it won't always immediately disengage the clutch when put in gear (yes, even the transmission is fully computerized). One time during a long day in the field I accidentally left it in gear, not noticing because the tractor was at a full stop with no signs of moving. A few minutes after I got out of the cab it decided to kick in. Luckily it was in a low gear and I was able to safely get it stopped, but it's easy to see how that could have ended up tragic. While that one was ultimately my error, without that bug it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place.
I'm sure you can come up with arguments as to why that software shouldn't exist – although I have to say it's wonderful when it works – but it's easy to see why bugs can be dangerous.
As many comments on these stories demonstrate, farmers have as much valid reasons to have control over their equipment as John Deere has for preventing it.
Technology is always about trade-offs. It's just that John Deere took things too far.
As much as I dislike John Deer's strategy, your statement is just stupid. Waiting for people do die before you regulate to make it safer doesn't work. Look at Ford who calculated that saving $x on a component was worth it if only y people die and their relatives sue.
Out of curiosity, what range of open source licenses appear in the code base? Do they use any software whose license requires source distribution? If so, are you aware of a "source code" page buried in John Deere's website, or some other mechanism by which they satisfy any distribution clauses?
What does that have to do with the code specifically written to force farmers to pay John Deer for maintenance and repairs? The stuff they could normally do themselves?
There is an obvious trend to make simple things complicated. Like how you have to remove the whole front end of a car to change a headlight. This sounds exactly like that.
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.
Us? Who is "us"? Why are you trying to shout down an opposing view? You want prefer the echo chamber?
>Replacing a fuel pump is not going to turn a tractor into a rampaging death machine.
Am I going to be able to replace whatever parts I want on my Model 3? Because "we" certainly love that company here!
If you want people to not modify your hardware or software then you make it so easy that the alternative doesn't look good.
I've seen integration builds take days to finish (not including running of unit tests).
Look I get it, John Deere is evil. But this codebase is beyond any one person or team's comprehension. It's very massive, and it's very complicated.
Where else do you get an engineer who wrote the code commenting on the article in question?
This is a problem.
Edit: I want to add something.
Serious 3rd party serious mechanical shops have had the ability to intervene on this kind of equipment - I suppose. The same way that independent serious and competent car repair shops exists.
One problem we are about to all observe, and which actually has already began, is not typically that owners would like to rewrite the software and run their car/tractor/whatever with the modified/rewritten version.
The problem is that vendors are taking the dangerousness argument and (mis)using it as an economic weapon in the same time to gain anticompetitive in the maintenance market -- like the comment to which I'm replying to does, in effect (concentrating on the risks of unrelated open changes, instead of discussing the initial problem! )
And moreover in the same time, car vendors, for example, have proven several time we can not trust them with critical software.
As an aside, I remember the last time I had a John Deere tech out. Even for him to access the service manual (to fix a mechanical part), which was fundamentally not much more than a simple search tool that displays PDFs, required a surprising level of authorization to access each document, with everything encrypted. It seemed a little extreme just to get a simple diagram. I can sort of see why some worry about where the company is headed.
Can also confirm that aircrafts can do more damage than tractors if things go wrong.
Like the JDs in the article that are so complex that they can steer themselves, aircrafts also do this!
I don't see how tractors are any different either. So JD should cut out this rent-seeking bullshit and stop pretending it's in the best interest of anybody other than their shareholders.
Let me ask you this -- why in the world do the lines of software you write prevent a qualified mechanic from changing a transmission? You know people used to do that all the time when tractors had zero lines of software in them.
After all you are trying to very cleverly change the subject here. You are doing it very deftly, as you should, because you are not a software developer, you are a PR drone and it is your job to deftly change the subject.
The question here is not about the quality of the John Deere software, so it does not really matter how many engineers worked on it or how hard they worked on it. The problem is that the John Deere software takes away an essential right of property ownership that people take for granted.
No one is accusing the JD software of being faulty, i.e., incapable of serving it's intended purpose. People are accusing the software of having nefarious purposes and serving them all too well.
Also, honest question here about changing transmission. You make it sound as if it's completely unrelated with the code, but is it? The code may very well be tuned for the hardware as it is, and changing any of it could also lead to unexpected results.
Of course there's much better ways of going about it, but from a lawsuit protection perspective, I think you're simplifying an issue which is much more complex than it may seem at the surface.
I mean, it used to work like X. Now it works like Y. Which you could inspect via the code. The reality is it works like ?. Because only god and the parent throwaway know.
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.)
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.
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.
Was that also lost productivity?
Maybe we could fix it by giving everything for free!
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.
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.
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.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farm...
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.
This has pretty frightening implications for the state of consumer goods, if industrial goods are already going this direction.
This scenario has played out thousands of times in the manufacturing/industrial sector over the past 30 years. The end result is that the vendor trying to lock their customers in to a service contract loses out to whoever makes a remotely comparable product that isn't locked in within a decade. The sales generated by virtue of being the "non-bullshit" vendor far outweigh the profits associated by following the market leader into the world of walled gardens.
Because the minute an easily applicable patch that makes tractors do more for less, but with more pollution becomes available, a lot of people will apply it. Diesel cars already have this problem with particle filters.
It's not just companies that are greedy and want to profit off externalities; so are many (most?) people, especially when incentivized by financial pressures.
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.
You make it sounds so easy to start a tractor company.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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_Constructio...
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.
This as a service model is not inherent to the complexity, it's usually a cash grab.
Edit: it looks like the physical components themselves are DRMed? Wtf?
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.
I think it's just the same reason Google bashing is more prevalent than Bing bashing.
Relevant thread on The Combine Forum (because that's a thing, apparently):
http://www.thecombineforum.com/forums/31-technology/239314-w...
That's also because their software is crazy advanced. Basically automates the whole plowing and such. Big market differentiator.
John Deere essentially is the entire market for these machines. Especially in the US.
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.)
There are also fewer every day.
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...
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.
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...
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.
There's also a reasonable middle ground: vehicles will run unsigned code, but running software not signed by the manufacturer transfers all liability to the vehicle owner in case of bugs and/or malfunction. Third-party maintainers can provide signed builds and contractually agree to cover the same (allowing repair/maintenance even if the original manufacturer stops providing it).
The circumstances are in no way new and don't merit new rules or expectations. What is actually new is increasing legal and technical roadblocks to self repair that enable manufacturers to design hardware that is worse for nearly everyone and better for their bottom line.
These markets are full of entrenched players who all have an financial incentive to make anti consumer choices so expecting a free market fix is probably laughable. The only real solution is the hated "regulation" where we seek individuals who are subject matter experts without financial incentives to dictate that people must do what is best for everyone rather than their bonus.
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.
- 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.
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?
Because a farmer in the middle of a harvest can't afford to 'wait in line' until the manufacturer or the dealership has time to send someone over to make a repair.
I've lived in a farming area and had a pretty good machine shop as well as a ton of welding gear and it didn't take long before farmers knew where to find me in case of a problem just to temporarily fix the issues they would encounter to be properly taken care of once the harvest is in.
The weather waits for nobody and losing a crop because of equipment failure can put a farmer out of business.
Right to repair.
The best outcome of all this nonsense could be that manufacturers of capital goods such as tractors are by law required to fully document what they sell including schematics, board lay-outs and source code or even a reproducible build package.
Up until a few years ago, farmers used to be able to buy farm equipment with the understanding that they could fix it whenever issues arose and didn't need a gatekeeper to come fix their hardware.
Sucks, but there you go. If they managed (as a group) not to buy the tractors, the gatekeeper would go away.
Are you sure about this?
From the article:
today's tractors are high-tech machines that can steer themselves by GPS, you also need a software key — to fix the programs that make a tractor run properly
So - its not the same as the tractors they purchased a few years ago.
Maybe they didn't buy the tractor specifically for those features or maybe you can't even buy a tractor today without those features, but they probably knew what they were getting into before they bought it. Its not a great situation for farmers who don't want those extra bells and whistles but it is what it is.
Did you read the article? It doesn't say anything about hacking any SaSS at all. Or about " encrypted updates over the air"... so where in the world are you getting this from?
This is a right to repair issue, as the first part of your statement talks about. This is farmers in the feild, and gasketA broke, now either they have the right to modify their own software (that exist on their systems, not on a server somewhere, so not SaSS), or they have to pay a JD contractor to come out, and lose all that daylight in the meantime.
>Why is it that these farmers believe they have a right to modify that software?
Because, farmers of all people have traditionally been supporters of the free software movement before the free software movement even exist... in the form that farmers have exercised the second software freedom
"The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this."
and see no reason they should have to stop now just because some corporation wants more money. In the past instead of software it was justy a pair of pliers and a welder.
The real question is, seeing how to fundamentally misunderstand and misstate the issue, how is it that you think they shouldn't be able to modify their software?
Following this horrible line of thought, what abuse does it not allow? What's next; "You may not weld that axle because it contains our proprietary metal blend and we own the patent on the method for repairing it and we also own the patent on the filler-rod needed "? The mind boggles at the mental gymnastics.
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
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.
In what way does any of that not apply to owning a tractor?
> 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.
Yes we do! People have been pissed about DRM, hardware locks, and access restrictions in commercial products for about as long as they've existed. It's a big issue and getting bigger every year. Locked smartphones, unremovable Windows telemetry, Garadget bricking some guy's gizmo over a bad review. You've been on Hacker News for over a year, how can you possibly think that?
A tractor isn't a service. Fixing problems in goods after they were sold doesn't make the purchased product (the tractor) a service either.
<side note>
Adding "Software as ..." is useless. Like the people that rushed to prefix everything with "Internet ..." in the dot-com era indicates the speaker incorrectly believes that goods and services suddenly lose some of their usual properties and become something fundamentally new when "Software" (or "Internet") is added. No, it's still mostly the same good or service. Maybe adding the unnecessary term "Software" may contribute to this confusion that mistakes goods for services?
</side note>
The same reason everyone else believes they have the right to modify the goods they purchase. This is a fundamental feature of what it means to own property. Yes, they do not have the right to copy the internal software, but that isn't what the farmers are trying to do. They just want to fix the tractor they purchased. If someone else retains the power to forbid you from modifying your own property, you don't actually own it.
Why does John Deere think it has the right to undermine the concept of property rights? Why do so many people accept that reinterpretation and defend tying[1] a service and/or software license to the purchase of a good, which is forbidden by the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts?
When you are talking about software running on the physical hardware that you have sold to people they have all trials and tribulations of ownership while you the creator are insisting on retaining control in order to suck more money out of their pockets.
To make the issue vastly more clear they having paid for ownership are insisting on free usage of the ALL the hardware involved including all processors and storage and insisting that the machine shouldn't deliberately disable itself unless it would be unsafe or damaging to run.
This isn't an unreasonable expectation.