> They're designing the products for maximum safety and performance. It was never in the cards to make it open.

Well, then, that was stupid of John Deere and makes them a victim of their own arrogance. Period. There wouldn't be a law right now if John Deere hadn't unnecessarily, by their own actions, pissed off so many people in the process of increasing "safety" and "performance". As though anybody complained about the lack of "safety and performance" in the century-long history of tractors before computers came along and saved us.

Let's be clear here: John Deere, a multi-billion dollar company, isn't the victim here, but the aggressor against family farms, good intentions or not. Mourning for them is absurd.

> A huge change, that will take years and millions to achieve?

Nope. It's as easy as clicking "Publish" on the repositories and setting the Dropbox folder to "Public." I could do it in 15 minutes. Any legal review or trade secret review or whatever else is entirely the company protecting their own interests. John Deere has done that long enough, a hard deadline is their self-inflicted penalty.