Excellent background from @doctorow.
doctorow.medium.com/john-deere…

"#Deere abuses copyright law to force farmers to pay for official repairs — even when the farmer does the repair. That’s possible thanks to a practice called VIN locking, in which engine parts come with #DRM that prevents the tractor from recognizing them until they pay hundreds of dollars for a John Deere technician to come to their farm and type an unlock code into the tractor’s console."

Plus: The win is not as good as it looks.

John Deere’s repair fake-out - Cory Doctorow - Medium

Last week, a seeming miracle came to pass: John Deere, the Big Ag monopolist that — along with Apple — has led the Axis of Evil that killed, delayed and sabotaged dozens of Right to Repair laws, sued…

^{Cory Doctorow (Medium)}

Update. In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power.
theconversation.com/in-rural-a…

"Under the agreement, John #Deere promises to give farmers and independent repair shops access to manuals, diagnostics and parts. But there’s a catch – the agreement isn’t legally binding, and, as part of the deal, the influential #FarmBureau promised not to support any federal or state #RightToRepair legislation."

#patents

In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power

Corporations restrict what farmers can do with their own seeds, as well as their farm equipment when it breaks down.

^{The Conversation}

Update. Turns out that John #Deere has been using open code under the #GPL w/o living up to the license. The Software Freedom Conservancy (@conservancy) is calling on it to comply — which would greatly enhance #farmers' #RightToRepair.
sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/ma…

"We…publicly call on John Deere to immediately resolve all of its outstanding GPL violations…by providing complete source code…that the GPL & other copyleft licenses require, to the farmers & others who are entitled to it."

#OpenSource

John Deere's ongoing GPL violations: What's next

I grew up on a farm. My parents worked hard to grow crops and manage the farm business. My parents also found additional jobs to make ends meet. As farmers have done for millennia, my family used tools to farm.

^{Software Freedom Conservancy}