Former John Deere employee here. The company isn't being spiteful or doing this to corner the repair market; they do it to avoid legal liability and fraudulent warrantee claims. They're an extremely risk-averse company.

EDIT: By the way, I favor owner's rights (my family farms with Deere equipment, and I think there's tons of mutual advantage in open sourcing software in this case specifically and in general), but as is often the case, the "greedy corporate oppressor" narrative is too simple.

"...as is often the case, the "greedy corporate oppressor" narrative is too simple."

What part of the things you describe aren't done with the purpose of making the company money? I mean, "we're risk-averse so we force the risk onto you" is kind of the same as "we don't want to spend money so we inconvenience you".

Of course, companies are in business to make money and will tend to use whatever avenues are open. When a company starts using a monopoly position to impose legal restrictions on customers (whether to avoid risk of losing money or just to make money), sympathy for their money-making efforts tends to lessen.

Edit: Note that the approach of Deer is not warranty voiding if someone hacks the software but a license agreement which effectively terminates the ability of the farmer to use the vehicle and thus the defense above is pretty disingenuous.

See: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

1. My argument was that their incentive is to avoid being sued, not profiting from a monopoly.

2. What monopoly are you proposing? A monopoly on the software that comes with the tractor?

I don't know if avoiding liability for their products is great way to make money or not. But if they are making a large effort to avoid liability, they are doing that as a way to guarantee profits - ie, make money.

Deere effectively has a monopoly on tractors at the scale discussed in the article. That's why farmers are buying the tractors and illegally moding them rather than buying competing brands - see comments elsewhere on this page.

And, of course, they're leveraging new legal concepts which allow them to sell their tractors while maintaining control over them through software licenses.

> But if they are making a large effort to avoid liability, they are doing that as a way to guarantee profits - ie, make money.

This can also be viewed as the more general "companies act in a way that gives them the best chance of continued indeterminate existence."

Well, I just want to put out that the "greedy or not" discussion frame is just terrible for discussion of issues in a liberal capitalist democracy.

Of course, most companies exist to make money. A few companies might other do good things in the mean time (go out of their way to hire under-privileged youth or something). But the assumption of liberal capitalism is that following market forces will usually do good and when it won't there are or should be laws saying otherwise.

So the "bad" companies aren't the "greedy companies" but rather those companies which either break the law or "pervert" the law - find their ways around laws that should be there or use their influence to create laws that shouldn't be there. That is, unethical corporations but not necessarily more greedy that a company hoping to make lots of money fully in the bounds of the law.

But despite this, "Corporate Greed" is shouted on the left as an objection (an objection that really makes no sense for left, right or center damn it).

And with this weak argument on the left, comes the equally disingenuous argument, "not bad because not greedy" which winds-up being a content-less defense. "What you're abusing those people but even aiming to profit by it, tell me again why this makes it OK?"

I'm not following. At which scale does John Deere have a monopoly?

Anyway, There's nothing nefarious about protecting your profits by avoiding liability. You seem to want Deere to be this evil corporation, which simply doesn't resonate with my experience in any way.

The problem which bothers many is that JD gives no warranty and at the same time forbids analyzing and modifying the firmware. It's perceived as a conflict - just like avoiding liability in this case is viewed as a way to increase profits.

JD does warrantee their equipment. I understand the perceived conflict, and I personally think JD should become more open. I'm only saying that this article is obviously sensationalized (no surprise coming from Vice).

From that perspective, it does start to look dicey in terms of "offer a lengthy and full service warranty" + "allow the end user to make modifications", so I understand that perspective.

But I do think there's a lot of room for detecting what changes were made and honoring / invalidating the warranty depending on them. Rather than simply saying "something was changed, therefore we invalidate the whole warranty."

The warrantee issue I mentioned was fraud--that is, sinking costs into investigating additional warrantee claims which turn out to be due to user manipulation. I suspect this is less of a concern compared with the legal liability of injury resulting from modification--I imagine it behooves the company to be able to point to the EULA and say, "look, we're doing everything we can to make sure this doesn't happen". This is complicated by the fact that they have to comply with laws in virtually every second and third world country, not just the US. It's just easier to be conservative with a blanket EULA. They could probably devise a more nuanced approach, but it would probably be costly and they probably have better (read: higher customer value) things they could put that money toward.

This is very similar to CPU overclocking. fraudulent warranty replacement claims were rampant untill recently but that intel fixed it .

In that case, just write the license contract to say "If you change the firmware, John Deere accepts no liability". Make people sign that if they want the unlock key. Presumably John Deere aren't liable for other kinds of misuse - e.g. if you crash it.

It's not that simple. A corollary is with cellphone firmware for the radio. They have to answer to the FCC. Updating the firmware will let you broadcast with more wattage, for example. FCC doesn't like that.

JD has to answer to the EPA. See Tier IV.

Automakers have to answer to the EPA too. That doesn't stop regular joes from changing their own oil in their garage and buying parts at Autozone. Most cars are not designed to make it impossible for car owners to do regular maintenance or simple repair jobs themselves.

Doing so would actually be illegal for the Automakers, who tried similar things in the early days of the Auto Industry and several laws and regulations were passed to protect consumers for Highway vehicles

It is highly unlikely this will work out very well for JD.

Yeah, it's called the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975. It doesn't just apply to cars though, it applies to everything, including farm equipment.

That was one, but not the only Regulation passed as a result

Things like ODBII Regulations, which do only Apply to Highyway Vehicles, and all of the regulations that come out of the USDOT for Highway rated Vehicles.

As I understand, those contracts aren't legally binding, but they exist as evidence a company can point to in a trial to show that they tried to keep the user from doing X. An even more credible kind of evidence is actually making X technically difficult. Obviously they can't protect themselves against everything or they would go out of business (to use your example, they won't profit from selling stationary tractors). It's all risk management, and I'm not even saying I agree with their choices, only that their motives probably aren't as nefarious as Vice might want you to believe.

My dad is a mechanical engineer who loves cars. I spent my youth listening to him lamenting the fact that modern cara have too many electronics and DIY protections. That you can't even make an oil change without also notifying the computer, the interface for which is proprietary and only sold to licensed dealers, or the car would refuse to run because it would think its oil is bad.

He reminisced about the good old days when all you needed was a wrench and a hammer and you could fix anything on a car.

This was 10 years ago. I imagine it's only gotten worse since.

Coincidentally he grew up on a farm where they would hack and build from scratch all sorts of farm equipment.

[citation needed]

There is no vehicle on the market (that I know of) which will refuse to run without an oil change.

On my 17 year old BMW and 2 year old VW, the oil service indicator is just a reminder, a courtesy. On the BMW I can reset it with a paper clip. On the VW I can reset it on the screen on the dash.

Honestly, most of the major things that go wrong with cars these days are still mechanical, and are still fixed in the old-fashioned way. I've done countless brake jobs, oil changes, suspension changes, fluid changes, cooling system swaps, and never once been stymied by a computer.

You haven't experienced it, but this sort of thing does exist.

Want to replace your relatively simple Volvo throttle body with a junkyard pull? Nope, it's programmed to your VIN.

Similar for many radios. And the notoriously glitchy matrix display on the dash cluster of 90s BMW's.

Also, PCM and body control modules, and more I've forgotten.

While it is tied to the ECM, and requires specialized tools to recalibate or change, they are required to operate on the ODBII standard which means 3rd parties can and do create these tools (and aftermarket parts), it also means independent repair shops can and do make the repairs

Here John Deere is not simply accused of making it more complex, but prohibiting any and all repairs not authorized by their own propriety computer software.

Tying elements like radios to VINs is actually a result of extremely rampant theft in 90s and early 00s, and I would never consider it a bad thing. Annoying, yes, but it has eventually led to dramatic decrease in car break-ins and theft over the last 10 years.

Maybe theft decreased because radios were becoming worthless due to their mainstream installation into all cars ?

I think it's still an issue that starts when the first radio gets damaged. That creates a secondary market for replacement radios, so theft occurs. Then, the person owning the car where the radio was stolen is now looking in that same secondary market for a replacement...and the chain never stops.

Similar for things like 3rd row removable seats and tailgates on trucks. Craigslist and eBay have more of these for sale than would make sense if they weren't being stolen.

none of the things you said are an oil change.

Nope, you're right. Was responding to "never once been stymied by a computer" preceded by a list of things that were also not oil changes.

On my Smart the service reminder is similarly easy to reset. All i need to do is press and hold two buttons that are too far apart to be pressed by one hand while turning on the ignition on the center console.

I usually do it by pressing the indicator with my feet and turning the key by hand.

Could you give more details? I'm interested about it.

> [citation needed]

I'm sure it was hyperbole to an extent. I don't know enough about the practice of fixing cars to know where the line lies. I just know what he said.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On 2 of my newer cars, they will not put out full power unless the oil change light is off. This is in a toyota with vvti. There is your example.

I completely agree, until you have a problem that requires you hook a scan tool up to that diagnostic link.

I have a snap-on mt2500, and two other generic scan tools. I can get hard codes on most vechicles. I can't get certain codes or repair information on many newer vechicles.

The problem arises when you have an intermittent problem, and need access into those propriatiatry systems. The dealerships get software updates, but automotive companies are not required to inform anyone that there's been an change to the existing software.

In states like CA, which are very strict with emissions; failing a smog check because you have on old version of firmware is beyond frustrating. Most people have no idea that the reason they failed is due to an older software. Most smog shops don't even have information the dealerships have. It's a lot of trial and error to get that vechicle to pass those smog checks. It's not right. It should violate The Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

There are many indepent Auto Shops that are hobbled.

They need access to at least the dealership scan tool. I believe Massachusetts is the only state that enacted a "Right to Repair" law. If you live in that state, you can buy expensive dealership repair manuals, and get the opportunity to spend thousands on their scan tools. Just to find out what system/lazy sensor/etc. is broken in a vechicle you bought?

Having to take you vechicle to only the dealership is---un-American?

I hope that you see this. Your comments have been being autokilled for the past 6 months, you've been shadowbanned. Going through your history - I wasn't able to quite figure out why, except the lengthiness of your replies. Perhaps you got flagged as a spammer by the system?

I thought you should know.

For me, nearly this entire page of comments show up as [dead]: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=icantdrive55&next=12...

My dad was a mechanic by trade, and he used to say that people always complained about cars getting harder and harder to repair. When direct fuel injection was introduced, people who were used to working with carborateurs complained about "end of automotive industry" - yet now any mechanic can work with this. Same when high-pressure common rail system was introduced for diesels - initially, massive negative reaction from the auto repair industry, now everyone knows how to work with it.

I know people who bought brand new 2016 BMWs and Mercs, and the first thing they did was mod them - and the computer seems to work fine with whatever silly things they did with the engine.

So I don't think it's all that bad.

>That you can't even make an oil change without also notifying the computer, the interface for which is proprietary and only sold to licensed dealers, or the car would refuse to run because it would think its oil is bad.

Honestly I'm really sick of hearing idiotic stories like this. You need to demand that he tell you exactly what car is like this (basically, "citation needed").

My 2015 Mazda is the easiest car to change oil that I've ever seen. There's a service panel on the bottom of the car that comes open with two screws, and inside is the drain bolt and the filter right next to it (hanging down, so it won't pour oil all over when you unscrew the filter). It really couldn't be any easier. Drain the oil, replace the filter, replace the crush-washer on the drain bolt and put it back on at ~35 lb-ft, pour more oil in the fill hole on top of the engine. Then, on the infotainment system, you just navigate to the "maintenance" section where the oil-change reminder is, select "Reset" and you're done. The system even has flexible oil change intervals and will tell you when to change it based on your driving habits; mine lets me go 7500-10000 miles between changes.

This canard about "proprietary interfaces only sold to licensed dealers" is either total bullshit, or is only on certain (likely high-end luxury) cars that are easy to avoid.

(Edit: to be fair there is some of this for certain things and certain cars. But it doesn't exist as far as I've seen for basic maintenance tasks, it just seems to be something created in the minds of old people and passed around as rumor until it became accepted as truth. One example of something that really is like this I've heard of is some high-end cars with electrically-adjustable suspensions, requiring a special dealer-only service tool to calibrate it in case of repairs. But you're not going to see this on a $20K Honda any time soon; regular cars these days still have the same ol' completely mechanical MacPherson strut suspensions they've had for ages.)

>He reminisced about the good old days when all you needed was a wrench and a hammer and you could fix anything on a car.

That's bullshit too. Cars have always needed all kinds of specialized tools. Disc brake spreaders, steering wheel pullers, spark plug gap tools, feeler gauges, torque wrenches (try replacing a con-rod without one and see how long your engine lasts), cylinder hones, I could go on and on.

Tesla already does. If you have an accident in a Tesla, it will shut down its computer and you can't reactivate it without bringing it to a Tesla dealership. While I understand why they want to do it that way, it's inherently customer-hostile, because Tesla can refuse to re-activate the car. Imagine if you have a 15 year old Tesla that gets into a minor fender bender, and Tesla says that they won't reactivate your car because it's not supported anymore - but they are super happy to sell you a new one.

They are Trying

ODBII regulations for Highway Vehicles are what prevents the bulk of it today. ODBII does not apply to non-road vehicles like Tractors.

However Automanufacturers are moving anything that is not required by ODBII (which was passed in 1996 so it very out dated) to CANBUS and disallowing 3rd parties access. This makes is harder for Independent shops to service some of the non-mechanical parts of the car like the GPS, Radio, power seats, etc

ODBII has to be the greatest planned obsolescence scheme ever perpetrated. Want to continue driving that older car that is running perfectly fine? Sure go ahead and rip apart the dashboard to get at that sensor that happens to fail perfectly around 100k mile mark at a cost of about half the value of the car at the repair shop because it takes half a day for their tech to complete.

If it was about greenhouse gasses they'd let you keep the "dirty" car because the extra pound or two of emissions per gallon compared to a new car doesn't offset the carbon cost of building a new car from scratch.

How would any other protocol change your nonsensical example? Cars will have sensors with canbus or obdX. We arent running mags and carbs anymore man.

When the OBD system was created auto manufactures (via dealership trade organizations that are extremely powerful in some states due to the large sums of taxes paid on new vehicles) pushed for state regulations that don't allow cars to be used that have the check engine light on. Often the sensor not functioning has no effect on the use or safety of the car (also the sensors themselves are designed to be needlessly difficult to replace). In effect causing the use of older cars to not be cost effective. In my state emissions are measured at the tailpipe, you can be well within standards but fail simply because a sensor reports that it needs to be changed.

This is essentially a highly regressive tax scheme that subsidises auto makers and dealerships at the disproportionate expense of poorer working Americans. It gives auto manufactures a "replace car" light that they can activate and have enforced by law and thus, planned obsolescence.

As someone who grew up poor and has spent time not having access to food in order to replace a useless sensor in a family vehicle (or paying a fine related to not having a valid inspection sticker) and knowing many other families who have been in the same situation. I have seen first hand the issues with this policy.

Oh please. An OBD-II scan tool these days costs $50, and will tell you what's wrong. You can buy parts cheaply at Autozone or online. Working on cars these days is simpler than ever in many cases. There's even YouTube videos showing you how to do all kinds of stuff.

As for "ripping apart the dashboard" to get to the "useless" sensor, what kind of car was this?

Tesla does something very similar to this.

Your expectations based on consumer law may not apply in this case as the "farmer" purchasing the equipment is operating as a business not a private individual.