Excellent background from @doctorow.
https://doctorow.medium.com/john-deeres-repair-fake-out-79da4978f4c1

"#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.

Update. In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power.
https://theconversation.com/in-rural-america-right-to-repair-laws-are-the-leading-edge-of-a-pushback-against-growing-corporate-power-199372

"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

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.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/mar/16/john-deere-gpl-violations/

"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