[HN Gopher] Software fees to make up 10% of John Deere's revenue...
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Software fees to make up 10% of John Deere's revenues by 2030
Author : agomez314
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-09-13 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| awinter-py wrote:
| if their software is actually not a giant pile of crap they
| should be happy to compete on the market by letting other
| companies sell software for their shitty phone (or tractor in
| this case)
|
| 'tying' has been illegal like forever, shocking to me we allow it
| for hardware + software bundles
| otikik wrote:
| If their sales go down enough, I bet they can make that
| percentage even larger.
| throwawayKiwi9 wrote:
| Much of this is apparently are coming from EOL devices while also
| violating GPL. Shameful. Can't someone take action on this? The
| article references Sick Codes' talk at DEFCON, which was
| wonderfully done and highlights many serious issues here.
| buildbot wrote:
| Oooo are they? Report them to the software freedom conservancy:
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/help.html
| disintegore wrote:
| I'd be surprised if they didn't already know
| tengbretson wrote:
| I don't really understand why the tech-focused crowd has taken
| this up as some kind of proxy fight when by-and-large we gave up
| having root access to the machines we do our day-to-day work on
| decades ago.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > when by-and-large we gave up having root access to the
| machines we do our day-to-day work on decades ago.
|
| Speak for yourself. I've had root access to my dev machine at
| every job I've worked.
|
| In any case, not having root access because one's employer owns
| the machine is locking things down for security is very
| different to not having root access because the manufacturer
| prevents even the owners from having root access.
| pdntspa wrote:
| YOU may have given that up, but I refuse to work on a machine
| without root. In fact, it's insulting to not give me root.
|
| I'm not working in software any more (hopefully I won't have to
| ever again), but when I was this was a dealbreaker.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Because politicians care about farmers.
|
| It's a perfect proxy to fight for software freedom and Right-
| to-repair, because it mobilizes legislators from nebraska and
| other non-technical folks to speak up about issues that us
| programmers and techies have been harping about for decades.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Programmers have been enriching themselves for years by
| creating the tools and infrastructure upon which the massive
| shift from CAPEX to subscription-based economics has been
| built and now they want to speak up? I don't want to hear it.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Programmers did this? From my experience, programmers hate
| this industry shift to "rented" software, and it's the MBAs
| that have pushed this on us as they've infiltrated the
| C-suite over the last decade+.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Cue a thread about how VSCode is a Trojan horse but nobody
| wants to stop using it because it's just so _damn
| convenient_.
|
| Edit: Or a thread about how users in western countries
| should not be allowed to run TikTok on their own devices
| because: China.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Programmers are also the only group who has been creating
| an ecosystem of completely free tools that anyone can use
| or modify for themselves with zero restrictions.
|
| Software has zero production costs and this enables all
| sorts of uses, moral and not.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Software is just taking over the world. I realize that this may
| make it harder for a farmer with a wrench to fix the machinery as
| farmers have done for so many years, but it's just reality. If
| there were a market for stripped-down, software-free, easy-to-fix
| farm machinery, I would guess someone would fulfill that demand.
| mminer237 wrote:
| There already are competitors with less aggressive software,
| but building massive machines like Deere does requires a lot of
| capital. Kubota's largest tractor is like 200 HP.
|
| My understanding is that the Clean Air Act now largely requires
| manufacturers to ensure consumers can't modify the software to
| run if it fails emissions checks, but I haven't researched the
| law myself.
| csours wrote:
| Even uncertainty about enforcement can motivate companies to
| lock things down.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Software may be taking over the world, but the "pay us rent
| forever to use the same software" business model doesn't have
| to. Right-to-repair should extend to software (for example,
| providing API documentation to customers), especially after
| EOL.
| mamonster wrote:
| Well the argument here is that a company would also need to be
| competitive in the actual machinery. John Deere has a huge moat
| in this space, a company stripped down, software-free and easy
| to fix machinery would need to make sure that it competes on
| everything else and has that as a differentiating factor. John
| Deere probably realized that that's an unlikely proposition and
| utilizing its market advantage to the maximum. But I mean the
| more "abusive" the business model the higher the incentive to
| innovate, so maybe in the future we could see such machinery.
| speed_spread wrote:
| This just follows the same trend of patenting crops and
| animal's DNA. These are all effects of overreaching IP laws
| creating inescapably profitable business models out of thin air
| rather than necessity.
|
| Software is only eating the world because we let it. When
| they're done eating what makes our lunch and lunch box money,
| then the robot tractors will turn to eat us.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Do you prefer that the companies patenting the DNA never
| developed the organisms in the first place, and that the
| farmers are left without the option of using them? Or do you
| have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development
| of better breeds and variants other than patenting? How else
| are the companies supposed to capture the fruits of their
| development?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize
| the development of better breeds and variants other than
| patenting? How else are the companies supposed to capture
| the fruits of their development?
|
| I don't get it. Humans have selectively bred better plants
| for _millenia_ before the era of modern IP. A process that
| 's far more time consuming than CRISPR. Yet now, there's
| suddenly no incentive to improve plants unless a
| corporation can own the results outright for 20 years? This
| is ideology, not economics. There are plenty of
| institutions that would work on improving crops even if
| Monsanto & co. got out of the game. Universities come to
| mind here. And the results of their work could actually
| help farmers that can't afford IP-encumbered crops, not
| just large, wealthy farmers.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > A process that's far more time consuming than CRISPR.
| Yet now, there's suddenly no incentive to improve plants
| unless a corporation can own the results outright for 20
| years?
|
| If you are fine with the process being much slower than
| now, why do you care about 20 years of patent protection?
| If you're willing to wait centuries for improvements the
| modern corporations achieve in years, why not just
| consider the patent protection period to be extra part of
| the process? It's still faster than the millennia you
| talk about, no?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Do you prefer that the companies patenting the DNA never
| developed the organisms in the first place, and that the
| farmers are left without the option of using them?
|
| If that's actually the alternative (and I don't think it
| is), then yes. Patenting DNA should not be allowed.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| But why? You're proposing something with clear negative
| consequences. Do you have some reason? Are there some
| benefits of blocking parenting organisms?
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize
| the development of better breeds and variants other than
| patenting?
|
| What makes you think the breeds they're developing are
| "better"? Monsanto famously developed "terminator seeds"
| that were only stopped from distribution under intense
| pressure from the community since they posed a major risk
| to the food supply[0]. The seeds were genetically designed
| to die after one harvest and Monsanto couldn't guarantee
| that the terminator variants wouldn't cross-pollinate with
| legacy varieties and inherit the same trait. That is pure
| greed. Not improvement, not innovation. Pure, unadulterated
| greed. We have to move past the argument that all
| businesses are truly innovating all the time. The only
| thing constantly being innovated is their ability to make
| money. Take everything else with a grain of salt.
|
| 0: https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The fact that farmers use them makes me think they're
| better. Farmers can buy "generic" non-gmo seeds that cost
| practically nothing. They choose not to, presumably
| because they believe they won't make as much money.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >They choose not to, presumably because they believe they
| won't make as much money.
|
| They choose not to because Monsanto famously sues the
| hell out of farmers who have patented seeds in up in
| their farms.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Terminator seeds were developed specifically to prevent
| GMOs from 'contaminating' heritage crops, a case that
| environmentalists care deeply about. There are plenty of
| other reasons to criticize the commercial seed industry
| but this isn't one of them.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If they aren't better, why would a farmer care if they're
| for sale? They could just use the older varieties and not
| suffer any penalty.
|
| No, the whining about patented plants is because they
| would be superior, and farmers who spurned them would be
| at a competitive disadvantage.
|
| You can't have it both ways.
|
| Oh, and why are terminator seeds (which Monsanto never
| sold) any worse than hybrid seeds, which don't breed true
| and effectively can't be replanted?
| pdntspa wrote:
| Monsanto sends out their goons to monitor for crops using
| Monsanto seeds without appropriate licensing. The cross-
| polination threat is very real and has resulted in a lot
| of pain and anguish for farmers who choose not to use
| Monsanto seeds
| pfdietz wrote:
| You are repeating odious propaganda here. Monsanto never
| sued a single farmer for inadvertent contamination (and
| would likely have failed miserably if they had tried).
| They have sued farmers who replanted a licensed crop in
| violation of the license, and they sued a farmer who
| deliberately sprayed a field with glyphosate to
| concentrate traces of resistance genes that had drifted
| in, so he could produce his own resistant seed. No honest
| farmer would have anything to worry about.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There was a time (most of history actually) when "honest
| farming" also involved improving the crops you grow
| through selective breeding. That's how we ended up with
| the modern forms of staples like wheat. Now this activity
| is being portrayed as theft.
|
| I think the burden of proof is on strong IP advocates
| here. _Prove_ to me that innovation would be stifled if
| plant patents were not allowed. Because all I see is a
| massive centralization of that innovation into the hands
| of a few gatekeepers that get to own the results.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure honest farming involves spraying your crop
| with a weed killer that kills it, then retrieving the few
| rare survivors. /s
|
| In general, anything GMOs are going to be used for are
| things you can't reach by ordinary selection. Otherwise,
| that approach would have been used.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| "Oh no, our crops did what crops do, better starting
| suing!"
|
| Monsanto can get fucked, the idea of patenting nature is
| so obviously absurd on the face of it that I must assume
| you were not in your right mind while writing this
| comment.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > If they aren't better, why would a farmer care if
| they're for sale? They could just use the older varieties
| and not suffer any penalty.
|
| Many farmers use Monsanto out of fear for being sued.
| Monsanto has license agreements in place that permit them
| to sue farmers that use their seeds without permission.
| This means that if your neighboring farmer uses Monsanto
| seeds and some of the seeds blow onto your land and
| cross-pollinate, you're now violating Monsanto's patents.
| They've sued farmers for millions over this[0].
|
| > Oh, and why are terminator seeds (which Monsanto never
| sold) any worse than hybrid seeds, which don't breed true
| and effectively can't be replanted?
|
| Like I said, Monsanto couldn't prove that terminator
| seeds wouldn't cross-pollinate with other varieties,
| which could've triggered a mass-starvation event unlike
| anything we've ever seen. It's crazy to see people
| defending this kind of behavior.
|
| 0: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/mo
| nsanto...
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Many farmers use Monsanto out of fear for being sued.
|
| If you buy seed from another supplier, Monsanto would sue
| you? It's incredible you could make this statement
| without realizing how completely and obviously absurd it
| is. If this scenario were real, other seed producers
| could have demolished Monsanto with restraint of trade
| lawsuits, and would have.
|
| And no, Monsanto never sued a single farmer due to
| inadvertent contamination from GMO pollen. They stated
| they never would, and it's very likely that even if they
| had tried, it would not have worked (since the farmer is
| not responsible for the contamination.) They DID sue a
| farmer who deliberately sprayed a field that had been
| contaminated, to kill off the crops without the trait,
| and repeated this until he had selected for and
| concentrated the resistance trait. THAT act, spraying and
| collecting, showed malicious intent and violated the
| patent. It's not something an honest farmer would have to
| worry about.
|
| If terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) caused
| traces of cross pollination, why would that be a problem?
| The trait would rapidly select itself out of a
| population.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| Your defense does not come across how you think it does,
| particularly because it's inherently absurd and devoid of
| reason.
|
| "You there! Crop! Stop sharing genes! Stop adapting to
| your environment! This piece of paper says you can't!"
|
| The idea that you can loose a reproducing organism on the
| world and then sue people when that organism does what
| reproducing organisms do is just... stop and listen to
| yourself. You're spouting nonsense syllables that
| resemble speech.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| These things are perfectly reasonable in the world of
| regular copyright. If you take a photo, and accidentally
| catch a copyrighted content in the frame, it's perfectly
| fine, but if you deliberately crop the copyrighted
| content from your photo, and reproduce it for financial
| gain, that's illegal.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| That's a bad analogy. Photographs don't reproduce with
| each other. Trying to force the notion of "copyright" on
| nature is an absurdist take that needs to be rejected
| with prejudice.
|
| If Monsanto's little wet dream does come to pass, I
| imagine you'll defend things like "Sorry, but Monsanto
| says you haven't paid your kidney licensing fees, we're
| going to have to take that transplant back" or "Looks
| here like you owe us money because one of your ancestors
| bought some genes from us".
|
| You'll probably say that can't happen for some reason or
| another, but unless we push back forcefully now, it will.
| Once you've thrown reason in the trash, all that's left
| is greed.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > That's a bad analogy. Photographs don't reproduce with
| each other.
|
| So what? How is this relevant? The crucial aspect is
| captured by the analogy: accidental copyright
| infringement is by and large not possible to prosecute,
| but deliberate infringement by pretending an accident is.
| Nobody lost a lawsuit to Monsanto just because their
| crops accidentally shared some genes with Monsanto
| plants.
|
| > If Monsanto's little wet dream does come to pass, I
| imagine you'll defend things like
|
| Are you able to maintain some minimal standards of
| politeness and charity in public discussions? First
| "spouting nonsense syllables that resemble speech", now
| you're creating a blatant straw man. Is this how you
| normally talk to people? Maybe I should pick a random
| organization that I'll impute you are a fan of, invent
| some atrocious "wet dream" of it, and pretend that you
| defend that atrocity. How about that?
| pfdietz wrote:
| If you listen to the anti-GMO, anti-Monsanto people long
| enough, you realize they're arguing in total bad faith,
| with talking points that make no sense. There's some sort
| of irrational undercurrent driving it.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| You set this up as an either/or as though we had no system
| of crop development in place before patents.
|
| Though this may accelerate development, the real question
| is whether the cost is worth it.
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| So what's stopping people from making an open-source open-
| hardware tractor? There's stuff like Open Source Ecology
| which is very cool but nowhere near what John Deere offers.
| It's just hard to make stuff on their level and engineers
| want to be paid big bucks and not work too much. How do you
| ensure you have enough for their wages with your open-source
| open-hardware tractor company?
| pstuart wrote:
| Open Source Ecology was an exciting proposition but seems
| to have collapsed into the gravitational pull of its
| founder's ego.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I believe that the culture is just not there, generally.
| The industry is thinking in short-term ROI and "cost of
| doing business" ways but are actually locking themselves in
| which will have immense long-term social (externalized)
| costs. We hear a lot about GMO's health and environmental
| concerns but the real issue IMO is the captive business
| model these proprietary technologies imply. This will take
| decades to change.
|
| In the current conditions, I agree that an open-source
| supplier is a though proposition. "The invisible hand" is
| working on a time scale too short to allow self-regulation,
| thus the playing field would have to be leveled
| politically, maybe by changing the IP laws to benefit the
| people more. Unfortunately, a nation of vehement lawyers is
| very unlikely to allow this.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Just give it time, people used to pay for OS back in the
| days.
| bombcar wrote:
| The people who _want_ an open-source open-hardware tractor
| continue to run their older tractors forever; you can get
| parts for nearly anything and the oldest tractors can be
| fixed with a welding torch and a supply of steel.
|
| The cross-section of "willing to pay full price for a brand
| new farm implement" and "cares enough to get a slower/less
| featureful device for open-source" is very small. If the
| open tractor was _better_ and _cheaper_ than the Deere, it
| 'd win even without being open, and if it is _not_ then it
| has a hard row to hoe.
|
| Construction equipment went down this path long ago, I've
| heard that Cat will basically give you machines for free as
| long as you sign up for the service/maintenance contract
| ...
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| How many harvests do you have to lose to tractor is down
| and Deere repair men won't be here for a month, before
| slightly worse but self repair possible tractor is
| better, cheaper tractor?
| bombcar wrote:
| How often does that happen? Every small town around here
| has a Deere shop and it doesn't seem to be a major
| concern.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| In fact the opposite ... one of the reason's Deere is
| popular IS there service coverage. In fact it is worth a
| premium.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I kind of like all of the computers in my car. The computer
| control of fuel injection, for instance, has boosted mileage
| and dramatically reduced pollution. There are dozens of smart
| chips that are saving lives and cleaning the environment. So,
| you can demonize it by invoking the patent office or software
| IP, but if that's part of the trade off, well, I'm generally
| willing to make it.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| What happens when the automaker updates the software in
| your car to charge you a monthly fee in order to use those
| same computerized components? This is already happening,
| most recently with Toyota putting its remote start feature
| behind a monthly subscription paywall[0]. Imagine buying a
| car that had all the features you want, only to get an
| email 6 months later that you now need to pay a
| subscription to continue using those very same features.
|
| 0: https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-
| fob-...
| slt2021 wrote:
| it doesnt work exactly like that.
|
| when you buy a car, you can either pay full price for a
| feature, lets say heated seats for $4000, or you can
| purchase subscription for $80/mo, or you may opt out of
| that feature, save money and it will be disabled
| programmatically in your car. Just as if car was never
| supplied with heating element for seats.
|
| yet your car will still be shipped with heated seats -
| just because it is cheaper to do that for manufacturing
| purposes. Cheaper to equip all cars with the standard
| heated seats, than manufacture two model of seats: with
| and without heating.
|
| plus you can always subscribe for that feature any day
| post purchase, so there is no downside for manufacturer.
| you get what you pay for.
|
| you can always pay upfront for the feature and will never
| have to pay subscription
| kickout wrote:
| Mmm, I think your wording is clunky. Most of the crops that
| have patents have the patent on biotech trait. You can take a
| patent on a newly developed crop variety, just like any other
| _novel_ invention--plants are no different. Also look up the
| Plant Variety Protection act (1974?), which also provides IP
| protection for crops.
|
| Without these, it's debatable how much innovation would occur
| in crops/plants.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Plants _are_ different. Unlike most inventions plants will
| generally replicate themselves given the opportunity. The
| idea that you can sue for patent infringement when this
| happens naturally is absurd on its face, yet here we are: h
| ttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto
| ...
| kickout wrote:
| Nobody is patenting naturally occurring plants to my
| knowledge. Plant breeders make specific (usually) sexual
| crosses and sift through the progeny. Since plants have
| tremendous variation, many of the progeny are different
| than the parents. This is the basic form of one
| invention.
|
| Also your comment does not make sense. Some plants are
| can self-pollinate and are sufficiently inbred so that
| they 'replicate' themselves. Many plants are out-
| crossers. There also exists apomixis, asexual
| reproduction etc. Plant are also well suited to clonal
| propagation.
|
| 'Natural' is a completely vague term. Many of of the
| crops we have bred and that are IP protected (soybeans,
| corn, wheat, cotton, rice) have effectively 0% chance of
| occurring 'naturally' in nature because they conditions
| for their fitness to be high enough likely would never
| exist.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Nobody is patenting naturally occurring plants to my
| knowledge. Plant breeders make specific (usually) sexual
| crosses and sift through the progeny. Since plants have
| tremendous variation, many of the progeny are different
| than the parents. This is the basic form of one
| invention.
|
| I never argued that they were patenting wild plants. But
| bred plants existed long before they could be patented.
| Indeed, Monsanto did not start with "wild" strains, but
| with strains developed over millenia of selective
| breeding. Plant patents are a form of "enclosure", where
| a domain that was previously freely available to the
| public (plant breeding) becomes commercialized and
| monetized so only a few entities can realistically
| improve on plant strains without risking a lawsuit. How
| this benefits innovation in the broad sense is beyond me.
| But it's certainly good for biotech companies' bottom
| line.
| kickout wrote:
| Go check out crop yields of your favorite crop for the
| past 20,30,50,100 years. Plant breeding and biotech have
| done _alot_ to reduce hunger and keep food prices low.
| Previous generations may have breed crops for pure
| survival reasons (they needed the best genetics to
| propagate themselves to ensure a plentiful harvest next
| year).
|
| I enjoy the debate around plant breeding, and there are
| issues with IP and how that IP is
| protected/enforced/interpreted. No different than many
| other industries. It would be difficult to adequately
| argue that IP in the ag sector has been not been net
| beneficial for most players (companies, consumers,
| farmers, etc.).
| kickout wrote:
| Private plant breeding corps have only been around for
| <100 years (many <40). Many research universities and
| non-profits (CGIGAR, IRRI, CIMMYT, etc.) do plant
| improvement and had a huge head start. Yet these
| innovations didn't arise from them.
|
| I would argue they've simply been outcompeted. The market
| has spoken in many cases. You can still buy non-IP seed,
| easily. But because there is no-IP, its hard to recoup
| money and reinvest it thus they stagnate.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Yes, these things get conflated. The one valid concern
| though, are adjacent fields - one using licensed, IP
| protected seed, and the other using a heirloom variety.
| There have been cases of cross-pollination where the non-
| IP-purchasing heirloom user is accused of using seeds by
| evidence of the resulting cross-pollinated results. It
| isn't clear to me if this a just a fear or something that
| has happened (the lawsuits, certainly cross-pollination
| occurs).
| kickout wrote:
| If it is intentional, that's a no-no IMO (like the oft
| mentioned Canadian farmer). If its unintentional, there
| can be no claim of infringement. Lots of grey area in
| intent, but heirloom and landraces should have just as
| much freedom to operate (grow) as bred/biotech varieties
| tarakat wrote:
| > just like any other _novel_ invention--plants are no
| different.
|
| They are. E.g. Monsanto didn't invent the glyphosate-
| resistance gene for their Roundup Ready GM crops. The gene
| was already present in nature, and Monsanto merely copied
| it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready#Genetic_enginee
| r...
| kickout wrote:
| The novelty was taking it out of one species and putting
| it into another for a specific purpose. Mother nature
| didn't transfer that gene across species. How that isn't
| worthy of IP is not clear to me.
| tarakat wrote:
| If by "that" you mean gene transfer technology, then I
| agree. But they also want to patent the result - they do
| not want a different lab with access to that same
| technology to be allowed to take a naturally occurring
| gene and transfer it into crops.
| smm11 wrote:
| Don't remove the mattress tag.
| sockaddr wrote:
| What? Do you not understand why that tag is there?
| smm11 wrote:
| Apparently warning against this is a big no-no!
| peteradio wrote:
| Does a high-margin spur on a third party service? I've thought
| about what that would take, I imagine you'd have to weather some
| pretty serious lawsuits but maybe if you had some backing it
| would be doable?
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| You'd need enough backing to fend off a company that earned
| almost $40B in revenue in 2020 from an attempt to capture one
| of its fastest-growing revenue streams. Good luck finding a
| serious investor that would be willing to try it.
| peteradio wrote:
| What kind of legal fight would you be up against? If John
| Deere wanted to put up lets say 100 million to fight, what
| kind of money would need to be put up to defend, if its lets
| say 10 million or less, then maybe that's worth it if the
| market is 4000 million.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| The point of Deere defending their market would be to make
| it as expensive as possible for outsiders to take. There's
| no way they would let a billion-dollar revenue stream go
| for a few million. Just look at how much money was spent in
| the Google v Oracle lawsuit over Java APIs. Plus, if Deere
| won, they'd come at you for damages, which would get
| expensive very quickly.
| everforward wrote:
| The problem is probably in risk vs reward. You have to
| succeed in at least one lawsuit against John Deere (other
| countries may have different laws, and thus more lawsuits),
| and then you have to convince people to buy your third
| party stuff rather than OEM stuff.
|
| Then on top of that, you have to pray that John Deere
| doesn't successfully lobby for a law banning your software,
| or find a way to prevent your software working (i.e. a
| continual arms race).
|
| The profit is probably there, but I think the cost to get
| to the profit and the likelihood of failing are both too
| high to be appealing to investors. Those same investors
| could just invest in John Deere itself and probably get a
| better risk-weighted return.
| [deleted]
| elzbardico wrote:
| I wonder, aren't there other vendors with more basic equipment?
| maybe chinese?
| nicoburns wrote:
| Farmers on other threads on this topic have stated that other
| vendors don't have the same repair network that John Deere has,
| and that being able to get timely repairs (often <24 hour) is
| often critical to their work due to the small time windows in
| which certain tasks (like harvesting) need to take place.
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| Western countries don't trust China's computing hardware, for
| obvious reasons... why on Earth would they trust equipment that
| supports agricultural infrastructure?
| kickout wrote:
| Well, to be fair most of the drones used in agriculture
| are....DJI....
|
| There is inherent distrust, but Deere and Case are close to
| pricing out/pissing enough customers. I am on the record they
| are sitting on the autonomous tractor tech (today) because
| the existing market they dominate is too lucrative. Could be
| their kodak moment playing out. We'll see.
| Aperocky wrote:
| It's a tractor, those things used to not have any computing
| hardware.
|
| What we really need is a open sourced tractor protocol so if
| it breaks you can just slap a new chip there.
| la_fayette wrote:
| There is an open source tractor from the open source
| ecology project. From the videos it seems to be functional,
| however I guess for most farmers this would be a no go
| option.
|
| https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we really need is a open sourced tractor protocol so if
| it breaks you can just slap a new chip there_
|
| No farmer wants this. Good servicing beats open source in
| hardware, in farming and frankly most non-enthusiast
| spaces.
| janef0421 wrote:
| Farmers don't want an open source tractor protocol for
| its own sake, but if it allows for greater flexibility,
| reduced costs, and improved serviceability, then those
| will be relevant competitive advantages. You can see a
| similar phenomenon with linux on the desktop; Most people
| don't care about linux being open source in principle,
| but there is a meaningful, if small, amount of mainstream
| interest in it for reasons such as privacy and extending
| the lifespan of older hardware, both of which are enabled
| by linux's openness.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| any large market has segments - it is naive or worse to
| paint "every farmer" with a single brush; unconstructive
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > No farmer wants this
|
| I want this, my neighbour wants this, his neighbour - who
| runs an older, pre-proprietary John Deere wants this.
| Farmers need their tractors to work and anything that
| helps there is a boon. While ag contractors may run the
| latest most modern equipment farmers tend to have a few
| tractors themselves which tend to be a bit older, a bit
| more run-down than those shiny new JD/MF/NH/Valtra (in
| Sweden and Finland)/etc. machines. They can still do with
| some of the nicer parts of the electromagic on those
| machines.
|
| So... once those JDs go out of support, who knows? There
| may be a market for an aftermarket control box, one which
| pulls the machine out of the clutches of the mothership
| and puts it where it belongs, in the hands of the farmer.
| I have a proposal, just donate one of those machines to
| me and I'll rig up such a box. Not that my current 1982
| UTB640DTC (a Romanian license-built/copied (it is a bit
| unclear) Fiat 640 with FWA and a front loader) has given
| up but still...
|
| So, good servicing is fine if you can afford it but many
| farmers tend to their own equipment as well in which case
| the availability of parts and protocol specifications
| really comes in handy. Mechanical parts - that what used
| to define a tractor - tend to be readily available but
| electronics and specifications are a different story.
| rat9988 wrote:
| That's more of an american thing than a western thing.
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| Tell that to Australia -- they banned Huawei from their
| National Broadband Network and/or 5G hardware rollouts,
| IIRC.
| [deleted]
| notatoad wrote:
| of course there is. it's not hard to find a straightforward
| tractor that's easy for any third-party mechanic to do repairs
| on. that's basically kubota's whole sales pitch.
|
| but Deeres are still popular. turns out that all the
| complicated software stuff is actually helpful, and some
| farmers want to buy it. even if a bunch of people on the
| internet who've never touched a tractor in real life think they
| shouldn't.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Kubota doesn't have the breadth of product that Deere does
| especially at the large end. Doosan kind of does under their
| various brands but they don't really compete that hard in the
| agricultural sector and I don't know if their repair parts
| and software ecosystem is more or less locked down than
| Deere.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if a bunch of people on the internet who've never touched a
| tractor in real life think they shouldn't.
|
| Bunches of real working farmers agree as well. I've noticed
| that over time, I've been seeing fewer and fewer Deere
| tractors working the fields around here.
| notatoad wrote:
| plenty of real working farmers agree, sure. but they mostly
| just buy something else and get on with their lives.
| minhazm wrote:
| There are vendors with more basic equipment. But John Deere's
| selling point is the complex features they offer. I watched
| some farming YouTube videos and I was surprised by the
| technology in modern tractors. The tractors will drive by
| themselves and they'll keep track of what land they've already
| covered, help you align, let you control how many seeds you're
| planting per acre, etc. It's all very high tech and a single
| person in a single tractor can cover a massive area and their
| job is mostly just to supervise the tractor and make sure they
| don't run out of seed or whatever they're putting down.
| tartoran wrote:
| Amazing features, too bad all the margin profits will end up
| into JDs pockets.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _too bad all the margin profits will end up into JDs
| pockets_
|
| The reason these tractors sell is they have positive ROI.
| That doesn't justify the tying. But assuming they're money
| losers will lead to poor decisions.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Positive-ish, assuming you have good harvests. If you
| have a bad run of harvests the debt for that expensive
| tractor will end your farm though.
| airza wrote:
| I mean, they can have ROI, but if having one saves you
| 90K a year and they cost 89k a year is that really the
| optimal way to structure society?
| function_seven wrote:
| So saves me 1k a year? I don't think farmers are
| converting their equipment to John Deere for such a
| paltry improvement.
|
| But if it does truly _net_ me 90K additional profit (and
| thus the gross improvement is 179k, half of which is
| spent on the capital to make that improvement), then yes,
| that looks optimal.
| markvdb wrote:
| Belarus [0]. Not really a solution given the geopolitical
| context.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_(tractor)
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