Farmers in America are increasingly hacking the firmware of their John Deere tractors in order to repair them, Motherboard reports.
The reason behind this illegal activity is that John Deere has given license agreement to only Deere dealers and "authorized" shops can perform work on tractors.
That may seem fine at a glance -- John Deere built the tractor, so it knows the best way to fix it, right? That's just one part of it, though. According to the farmers, the company charges a heavy prize for its work, and most of the time technicians don't arrive in a hurry.
"If a farmer bought the tractor, he should be able to do whatever he wants with it," Kevin Kenney, a farmer and right-to-repair advocate in Nebraska. "You want to replace a transmission and you take it to an independent mechanic—he can put in the new transmission but the tractor can't drive out of the shop. Deere charges $230, plus $130 an hour for a technician to drive out and plug a connector into their USB port to authorize the part."
The legal license agreement specific didn't allow farmers to sue the company for any kind of "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment ... arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software."
Due to which farmers are turning to online hackers where they are giving them cracked versions of John Deere software that bypasses required authorization, which allow farmers to work on their own tractors.
Here is the full statement of John Deere:
Our number one priority is to design and manufacture safe equipment that provides value and performance for our customers, and software is a critical part of this. Software modifications increase the risk that equipment will not function as designed. As a result, allowing unqualified individuals to modify equipment software can endanger machine performance, in addition to Deere customers, dealers and others, resulting in equipment that no longer complies with industry and safety/environmental regulations.
This is why John Deere's relationship with the dealer channel is so important. Working with a John Deere dealer provides every customer access to trained technicians and expertise to assist with any service issues, whether in the shop or remotely in the field. Most of John Deere's late model equipment is equipped with technology that allows an operator to give a dealer remote access to help diagnose concerns real-time over a cellular connection (or satellite communications), which can alleviate the need for an on-site service call in the U.S.
When a customer buys John Deere equipment, he or she owns the equipment. As the owner, he or she has the ability to maintain and repair the equipment. The customer also has the ability through operator and service manuals and other resources to enable operational, maintenance, service and diagnostics activities to repair and maintain equipment. John Deere technical, diagnostic, parts and operator manuals are available and easily accessible to the general public.