You have a long tail of poor farmers, and a few very large powerful farmers.
Thus you have the politics of the small family farm barely making a living, and large industrial monocultures at the same time, and people picking and choosing which, as and when it suits.
They would be losing money without overpriced repairs. That's why they lobby so hard against right to repair.
Even with some kind of right to repair it still seems they're trying to keep you hooked on their resources.
But as you said, service manual + schematics would be great for some people. But companies will fight tooth and nail against it. They lose control over obsoleting older products.
same reason car dealerships want you to only go to them for maintenance
Which is a huge problem when you live in bum fuck nowhere like many farmers.
If American farmers wan't the most repairable tractor, they should just buy the one that is used in poorer, less-connected regions of the world. Those are built for durability and repairability.
Here's how it's always worked for me:
1. A code comes up on the computer.
2. A. The problem is self evident. Or;
2. B. I search online and find the problem. Or;
2. C. I search online and find the diagnostics manual, which I use to find the problem. Then I have diagnostics manual pdf forever, and can use this in the future.
3. A. I search online and find the parts diagram. Or;
3. B. I search my dealers website and find the parts diagram.
4. I order the part.
5. I install the part.
Has something changed with newer equipment that prevents farmers from doing this?
My more $$$ German car needs a service once a year. It reminds me. The actual oil change is easy, but THEN I have to reset the computer!! Not so easy. That needs special software. I bought a pirated package from China. They need a subscription too. Otherwise, I must take it to an "authorized" garage... more $$$. And all of this before there are actual problems to fix...
When you pay $$ for a big machine, you SHOULD get everything you need to keep it operational, indefinitely. No separate software packages, no subscriptions, etc. Maybe you need to download something on your tablet/laptop and buy a cable... but that should be it. That would be the law if I was the emperor! (No no no, I don't want to be elected president, stupid job. I said Emperor dammit.)
Because it doesn't address the actual problem.
The funny thing about that problem is that it is unsolvable.
Even by modern WIRED's low standards of journalism, Boone Ashworth has managed to be subterranean.
So the author is looking at one third of the problem (from the perspective of an IT worker), in a comfortable stage-managed experience put on by Deere themselves. A sensor with a disconnected cable - a five minute visual inspection would have also diagnosed the problem!
I'm quite comfortable with computers. And yet when working on my own vehicles, anything that mentions "use the manufacturer software" is avoided unless it's impossible not to. For example my experience using Honda HDS:
1. Spend hours installing Windows in a VM, HDS software from dodgy forums (to avoid the even dodgier "cloud" offering), running an ethernet cable 75 feet outside to where I was working - when my goal was to have my hands dirty fixing the car.
2. Massively slow scan times. We're talking 20 minutes sitting there initializing its understanding of the bus by probing every device every time the software starts up. The software starts up a lot because every time it hits some unexpected condition it needs to be restarted. Every time you choose a different option to check something about another subsystem, the software needs to be restarted. Every time you need to check if you've made a permanent or temporary change, it needs to be restarted. Every time you actually get your hands dirty and make some change on the car, it needs to be restarted. And so on. Companies view these tools as pure cost centers, making it so embedded developers DGAF about any kind of robustness or polish.
3. No actual description of what can be set, or theories of operation of any hardware device. The best you get is references from procedures in service manuals designed to be blindly followed, and the corresponding button in the software that runs some black box procedure.
4. Along with that, the chance of touching a lot of things you don't really want to be touching! HDS made me reenter the VIN number every time it started up (which remember, is often), and I think this was actually writing the VIN number somewhere! I entered it wrong once and it appeared that I had actually changed something.
Now obviously Deere is not Honda, but I don't see a reason to expect this would be any better. And of course this is not even touching:
> Prices start at an annual cost of $195 per individual machine
All this overhead adds up when you're working on one or two vehicles in a personal-bespoke capacity. I'm never going to reach for that software again unless I absolutely have to, even though I know in theory it can tell me a lot in one central place. I'd rather simply model a vehicle's computers as black boxes. I'm sure if you're a Honda tech you develop a model of how the software works, what steps of the procedures to batch and when to pause and check things over, etc. But from an individual perspective where I've got one car to fix rather than one every day? It's utter trash.
Adding digital control networks to vehicles increases their inherent complexity. This is unavoidable, similar to adding any new system (eg ABS, 4WD, emissions controls themselves, etc). I think mechanics could respect that, if it weren't bundled with a whole bunch of unnecessary/accidental complexity including top-down surveillance/control. Knowing a thing or two about technology and engineering, what would I actually expect?
1. PDF documentation with thorough bus diagrams. For every node on the bus, documentation from its manufacturer - its theory of operation, the settings it has, the messages it reads from and reports to the bus, additional message/register definitions for what can be read by diagnostic tools. Everything that you'd get if these were DIP switches and LEDs rather than CAN messages.
2. Machine-readable descriptions of CAN PDUs published by the manufacturer themselves. All the message/register/etc definitions documented in the above files, in a well-defined format ready for use by third party tooling.
3. Third party libre software with the usual `make && make install` install path (ie easily incorporated into every operating environment) that uses those definitions to display bus messages in symbolic form, as well as craft new messages to tickle device functionality.
I think that about covers it - there isn't actually much here, it just needs to be documented! I know interacting with digital vehicle networks would still be frustrating for many, but people would eventually get over it and even embrace it - it should be more convenient to have the computers display what they're reading rather than having to work around them. Checking the computers first would become standard procedure if the tooling weren't so infuriating.
(For more context my own tractor is a Kubota with HP under the Tier IV threshold. I earnestly wish it did have a DPF - less shit to breathe in and less black crap coating my loader. But not at the cost of dealing with the current "state of the art" computer controls! I've also heard horror stories about long term Deere parts availability)
The last link says domain not resolved.
Do better.
I pay a monthly fee for the right to pay Apple more money to repair my phone.
I know some repairs are included/free, but still…
The American Way is to let corporations fuck you over in any way that increases profits. Sure, they have the least efficient healthcare system in the world, ineffectual public education, massive wealth disparity, crumbling national infrastructure, and a different school shooting every week.
But at least they're not socialists.
>the least efficient healthcare system in the world
and the most advanced healthcare
>ineffectual public education
actually it's better than most rich countries after controlling for race/ethnicity
that said, healthcare, education, and most of all housing are massively far from free markets, they're the most regulated parts and it's hard to innovate. the more free you make those markets, the better they'll get.
>massive wealth disparity
because, and this is no exaggeration, we are way fucking wealthier than almost anything except oil-rich Norway and tiny Luxembourg. it's a lot easier to have disparity when some grasses grow tall.
>crumbling national infrastructure
depends; California and New York yes, Texas no
>and a different school shooting every week
not that often but this is an american pathology yeah
Socialism is a political ideology centered (it's really at it's core!) the idea of "means of production must be in the hands of the people". In reality the "means of production" (capital, land, workforce) was in the hands of a small undemocratic elected ruling caste. But the core idea still prevails. In socialism banks were seized (capital), land was seized from the farmers and Kolchoses or LPGs (agricultural production cooperatives) were formed by force. Companies were seized and Kombinate" were formed. The underlying idea of all of this force is the "dictatorship of the proletariat", their way to tell themselves that cruelty and excessive physical and psychological force is okay, almost a must.
Right to repair has nothing to do with seizing capital, land, or pressing the workforce into mismanaged cooperatives.
Another central idea of socialism is the thinking of castes, err classes. Most notably the worker classes. That describes the situation in GB around the industrial revolution. But today? Won't fit in most countries.
Right to repair has nothing to do with working class. A professor (the "intelectual class") would also be able to repair his stuff.
Tesla for example lets you pay to access their diagnostic software, so why is John Deere the bad guy here?
And yes. I am happy to expand that list to literally every other manufacturer you have in mind. They are all bad guys too. If manufacturers were altruistic good guys, they would need no regulation.
I can grab any data I want from the OBD port. The hardware was cheap, the software to use it is, again, free.
I'm not excited about this brave new world where you have to pay a subscription fee to plug a cable into a device you own and interact with it, and even less excited there are people here defending the idea.
Also, there's something special about tractors. Their owners (farmers) are both willing and capable of repairing tractors, in general, so John Deere is demonized for taking that ability away. Where as Tesla's owners are comfortable not changing their own oil, so "less" was taken away. (Yes, I know Tesla doesn't have engine oil, don't get hung up on that)
I work on a project related to it and was absolutely surprised at how the company gave instructions to the clients to help them fix their machines (stuff I wouldn't be able to do myself).
Having a non-working machine can mean big $$ lost everyday.
What a systemic downgrade in capabilities.
It's a subscription, with a DRM system so you have to use their app to browse the manual, and you can't print/save more than a couple pages per month.
In the last calendar year, this is basically the highlights (routine maintenance excluded):
On my Kubota L3010 I added remote hydraulics so I had to take all the bodywork apart. Discovered some rust, put about 20hr of panel beating, welding, and paint into the floor pan (NLA part, unfortunately). About 20hr after I got it all back together it started leaking hydraulic fluid from the clutch housing. So I get the privilege of doing all that disassembly again to split the tractor and replace the front driveshaft seal (suspected). It's a minor leak, so far, so this might wait a few years.
The 1998 12V 2nd gen Dodge is its own saga--new transmission, clutch, a bunch of paint work. Rebuilt the entire interior. Currently working on cleaning up wiring in the engine bay, killer dowel pin fix, fixing oil leaks from the injector pump gasket and vac/power steering pump, serp belt, crank balancer, etc. Still need to drop the fuel tank and replace the sending unit, as well as re-seal the axles.
My 1995 Land Cruiser just got new plugs, distributor cap/rotor, belts, crank balancer, front main seal, oil pump o-ring, etc. Should be good until next summer.
My 1999 Benz got some new A/C o-rings, all the low pressure fuel lines replaced, some rust repair (welding, panel beating, paint, undercoating, etc) on the front right jackpoint. All new stainless brake lines (https://www.linestogo.com/ 100% will buy from these guys again). This car is kind of sacrificial, eventually its engine (OM606) is going in the Land Cruiser in front of a purpose-built NV4500 transmission. If the rust doesn't get it first (ski bus duty), I'll probably shred the 722.6 by turning up the engine too much.
So it's not a small amount of work. But no reverse engineering is required. I can just read a book and follow the instructions therein and do literally anything that needs to be done on those vehicles.
Competition?
Competition forces companies to stop just pressing the pleasure button and start drinking from the water again.
is a very different person in different countries. The US has large scale agriculture and use large scale equipment.
So you're wrong.
Automotive is similar and I’m a bit worried for EVs; for ICE autos there’s enough emissions related regulation that some diagnostics and manuals are accessible, but for EVs there’s nothing much stopping a Deere style complete lockdown.
Regulation is the solution to this prisoner’s dilemma.
Good regulation: right to repair, manufacturers must supply manuals.
Bad regulation: JD bribed senators to write regulations that make it insurmountably difficult for new players to enter.
Calling regulation bad because corruption is baked into the US Constitution makes it really hard to get anything done.
Hard to break a monopoly when the government considers maintaining it to be a strategic interest.
Is that a system or is it individual greed? Every economic system has its own weak points that can be exploited by bad actors. Capitalism works. What doesn’t work is letting people get away with dirty tricks.
We'll never solve major challenges like the ever rising income gap, global warming and other environmental concerns and the inevitable cycle of enshittification without it.
The problem is that especially America views unrestricted capitalism as some kind of religion beyond reproach. They consider it a fact of life. But it is very hollow, it glorifies profit above all and has no eye for externalities.
As they currently control a lot of the world trade we're kinda stuck with that system. Trump voters are so angry because they've been getting the short end of the stick for decades. And he is alienating most of his allies meaning everyone is looking for ways to become less dependent on the petrodollar.
Unfortunately they voted for someone who will make it even worse. Instead of 'sticking it to the man' they're giving it to the man.
Every regulation looks good or at least defensible in abstract, especially when some peddler is trying to sell it and the consequences aren't obvious yet.
Up to $8k per engine unit produced in EPA regulatory fees.[1]
Between $100k and $500k per engine model variant for EPA testing and General Compliance.[2]
$100k to $200k for Transient & Steady-State Dynamometer Testing.[2]
$150k per engine variant for Useful Life Deterioration Testing.[2]
[0] https://www.msci.org/federal-rules-costs-small-manufacturers...
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-U...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engin...
(ignoring Australia and other countries having longer life expectancies and better cancer recovery rates, sure)
> not that often
It's telling you have to downplay this at all.
> depends; California and New York yes, Texas no
and the more than 40 other states? See the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card (spoiler, it's a C)
> depends; California and New York yes, Texas no
lol. lmao.
> the more free you make those markets, the better they'll get.
How can you concede the first point and argue the second in the same breath? Are you about to tell me European healthcare is cheaper because its some bastiom of deregulation?
I recently moved to Ireland (an EU country).
When I wanted to get set up with a new GP, I was offered an appointment the same week. I wasn't ready to actually go in yet, so I asked for one the following week. My wife needed some specialty care, and when we made the appointment they were very apologetic that they could't give us an appointment until 2.5 weeks later. (For a non-emergency consult, preparatory to a specialty surgery.)
Meanwhile, in the US, when we tried to make GP appointments, they were routinely not available until 6-8 weeks later. And that's if it was even possible; we had 2 GPs just leave the area over the course of a few years, and in both cases we were left to find our own replacements, despite the fact that both were part of larger medical practices with at least a half-dozen GPs each (plus others).
Yikes dude
Our public education is so pozzed in Dem/Blue states, though; that has nothing to do with ethnic makeup in the students. Bloated budgets fueling insidious DEI agendas with openly consumer-hostile teachers unions. Maybe in sane states it's better.
> and the most advanced healthcare
We have miraculously great trauma medicine and surgery and diagnostics. The NICU medicine I've seen at work is like science fiction.
That said, I'd argue my family doctor is just a brainless expert system for prescribing toxic pharma products. There's nothing healthful about that aspect of our healthcare. The terrible US diet and these wretched drugs are why we're so sick and the trauma doctors are so busy. It's complicated why it costs a fortune and yet we're so sick.
Americans need consumer protections so badly!
Can an American explain what this is supposed to be saying? Sounds like a right wing sound byte.
Are black people supposed to be inherently less healthy???
Saying this is something you need to "control for" is complete statistical nonsense. You wouldn't say "the accessibility in this building is better than average after controlling for wheelchair use".
As a counter argument: I was just looking at a small open source utility. As I was going through the code I found cases where certain arguments could be set to magic values that cause useful, but undocumented behavior. Should the developers be forced to document these options?
I don’t think a manufacturer should be able to lock you out of reading diagnostics on your own devices, or that anyone should be prevented from reverse engineering what those values mean. But I also don’t think there should be any requirement that they are forced to do additional work. That seems just as immoral.
Resetting the oil/maintenance light, recoding key fobs, resetting the battery stats upon replacement, etc.
I want independent mechanics to be able to do that. I also want to be able to do that myself, if I’m so inclined.
You were able to do that because it was open source. If a car mfr was willing to do that, it would be plenty enough for me. They shouldn't be forced to do any additional work beyond the 5 seconds it takes to type `git remote add origin github.com/honda/civic`. Then the community would have everything it needs to carry things forward.
Failing that, yes, I do think everything should be documented.
You're talking about things that by definition have to be documented and internally published in order to design and build the powertrain in the first place. You can't design a computer-controlled automatic transmission without documenting the shift points.
The cost is therefore essentially nothing, because the information already exists. Just copy paste it into a PDF and put it on your website.
The reason there is an opaque number in that open source utility is precisely because of a lack of open documentation for that register definition. Independent black box analysis of the messages only got as far as "write this value to do effect X". Whomever developed that utility would have loved to spell that bitfield out, but not at the cost of more days reverse engineering.
But manufacturers aren't reverse engineering register definitions, they're working off of vendor datasheets or protocol definitions they themselves created. All of this documentation has already been produced, as it was used to develop the tractor from its various subsystems. It just needs to be published!
I think that if you want to sell to the public, it is entirely moral to force manufacturers to do additional work. The trivial example is that we already force restaurants to do additional work to follow food safety and hygiene regulations. That is additional work they don't really have to do. If that's not amoral in the food industry, why would it be immoral for cars?
>> don’t think there should be any requirement that they are forced to do additional work
At one time seatbelts, airbags, emission controls, etc were all viewed in this category. Now we have regulations enforcing aspects of all of these. Why would diagnostics be different?
But they do do that. Also what’s the difference between a lot of obfuscation and prevention and how will you enforce that without lawsuits and discovery?
Also, what is those values have the ability to do damage and cause safety issues? Like losing your own software onto a control by wire car? Then you can rent a car and install your own software surreptitiously.
Intentionally obfuscating the data¹ also requires time effort and costs.
I'd love to move towards a world where owners can access everything, flash the firmware in the headlamps, etc. But all I can do as an individual is vote with my wallet and avoid the 2020s computers-on-wheels.
The cheap OBD2 readers lack the vast majority of data and tools you would want to use for service as well.
There are aftermarket options but most manufacturers want you to subscribe to their service tools - often charged per monthly plus an additional a fee per VIN it touches. These cost in the hundreds to thousands. It can be pretty frustrating as a shadetree mechanic.
Theoretically, they are to be replaced at 120k miles (!!) but they won’t even tell you that in the owners manual.
Insane.
The fact that they've been allowed to build systems like that is appalling.
It’s a shame, I use to buy the service manual when I bought the car.
***
From my experience in Estonia, any specialty care routinely has month+ waiting list. One example: I was trying to get diagnosed for ADHD, and a couple clinics were ready to make an appointment for me... where I could take the test, then wait a couple months until the actual psychiatrist can see me.
Then there’s dental care. I’ve had a chat with a nice girl who had, like, really bad teeth problems. Asked why she doesn’t get it fixed, and sure enough it’s nearly impossible to get an appointment on state insurance, and paying out of pocket was way too expensive for her. (We’ve joked about getting her a Russian visa so she could just go to St. Petersburg like I’ve been doing for my dental problems; of course, that was before the full-blown Russo-Ukrainian war.)
GP and emergency care are great. One night out I’ve twisted an ankle, decided it was not a big deal, so I got home, and woke up in the morning barely able to walk. Took an Uber, got to the nearest emergency room and got an x-ray and everything in maybe a couple hours. I haven’t been on the insurance plan at the moment, so at first I was quoted around 400 €, but after some back-and-forth I’ve learned that for same day accidents the rate is lower. Told them it was at 1am, so the final price was 5 € :-)
***
I don’t doubt it’s way worse in the US (never been!) My point is rather that regulation doesn’t really help here. We need to make incentives to have more affordable options, and make it easier to get to the market.
I’m now seeing a psychiatrist in Thailand for around $45 a session, and sure, everything is cheaper in Thailand, but the best part is I never have to wait more than a week to get a slot, and it’s all online. The most difficult part for me is going to Thailand every couple of months to pick up the meds.
At any rate, for things a manufacturer doesn't consider important enough to document themselves then there can be a clear alternative requirement - release whatever upstream documentation they did use to create it, plus the software source code they developed on top of it. If it's not important enough to have been documented as its own product, then it also isn't a significant part of the value they're actually selling, right?
If you’re starting up a small business, selling at-a-loss widgets to gain market share do you want to be forced to publish a diagnostic manual that not only increases your work, but may also increase your liability?
Seatbelts and airbags are safety, but if you talk to anyone at a body shop, they will tell you there are significant regulation changes in the past decade that have made cars more expensive to fix while not necessarily safer.
I just don’t think it’s as cut and dry as everything must be forced to be documented. What is everything, at what size or industry is this documentation required, why this industry and not that one, is it just OBD or _everything_ including all CAN bus communication, etc. Minimally the end result is increased cost for everyone.
If it’s already published, perhaps libraries should start collecting the service manuals.
The right to repair cases that bother me most is where the company goes out of their way to prevent end-user repair (cryptographic pairing of modules!?), or where service manuals/information exist but are only available to dealers.
There's documentation, and then there's documentation. What passes for documentation in the modern era is scattershot over thousands of JIRA tickets and Confluence pages. Most outdated.
I’m absolutely in favor of being able to repair my own stuff and voiding any warranty or liability in the process. I absolutely support reverse engineering and preventing companies from issuing copyright strikes on uncopyrightable facts about their products. I’m mostly OK with the idea that unqualified people can make potentially life threatening changes to their 2-ton vehicle barreling down the road at 80mph.
Would I like documentation for all these things? Absolutely! Should it be enforced by law? I don’t think so.
Yes. Network services and client software should be considered two separate products/markets, and tying between them should be seen as anti-competitive behavior worthy of anti-trust enforcement.
That the software industry has been able to develop some brazenly anti-competitive pratices does not constitute an argument that it should be allowed to continue.
I’m fine with Google Workspace owning the client and the service, same with Zoom, Slack, Teams, Box, Dropbox, etc.
I don’t think we’d have better games (pretty much for certain), and I don’t know that we’d have as good online productivity tools either.
You want to force companies to publish and maintain repositories using your preferred toolset?
https://github.com/Konik-ai/j1939_dbc/blob/main/dbc/j1939.db...
There are a ton of dbc files floating around like this. Almost any car with a turbo has a kit to flash the ecu for more boost, so even the proprietary signals have been reversed.
Ghidra exists. That doesn't mean all software is open source.
> You want to force companies to publish and maintain repositories using your preferred toolset?
Nope. Anywhere will do, whatever is easiest for them, as long as device owners can access it.
You're probably aware of this already but luckily a lot of service manuals can be found online in PDF form.
Somewhat related but I was going through an older relatives belongings not too long ago to help cleanup and found a bunch of old manuals for various household things. The detail included in them was beautiful to see - full wiring diagrams, mechanical diagrams, etc.
Not official ones for John Deere tractors unless they were leaked from authorized service agents!
One example: https://assets.sia.toyota.com/publications/en/omms-s/T-MMS-1...
The multi-user productivity apps you listed would most certainly be better off as separate clients and services! The entire point is that you shouldn't be forced into using one (often terrible) piece of proprietary client software simply due to the network effects of other people using it. Wouldn't it be nice to use the Slack client in a Teams environment (or vice versa if that's your thing) ? This would produce more competition because companies would have to develop the client software to be compelling itself, rather than relying on the pull of installed deployments with captive victims^wusers.