This is about a deal between two parties, both parties agreed during the tranfer of the goods, the conditions were known. Complaining after the sale is stupid. You had the chance to walk away from the deal because you didn't like it's conditions, nobody was forced. Interfering with this process reduces freedom. All I see a big market opportunity for hackable, open-platform tractors.
"Complaining after the sale is stupid." I'm really tired of this argument. Just because the sale wasn't made under duress doesn't mean that we should never complain about the sale afterwards. By that logic, you shouldn't be complaining about the comments here, since no one is forcing you to read HN.
Ok, so according to you, what one should do is keep your mouth shut during the sale, buy an un-hackable machine and afterwards try to get hacking rights by "lobbying" the government. Imagine if you sold your product to a customer, he promises not to void your terms but then immediately he goes to the government to try to make it legal to void the terms he first agreed upon.
Don't get me wrong, I love open source, I love Linus/RMS for giving me such a beautiful product with which I make a living. But it was theirs to give, not mine to take. You have the same strange ethics as RMS, two consenting adults make a trade, based on rules known in advance (ie., you cannot see/alter the source code), no one was hurt and no one has anything to do with this trade... and yet... RMS calls this evil. Again: I prefer open source to anything but the rights are the creators to hand out and the customers to accept or not, that is freedom.
Buy a different Tractor or try to negotiate a deal before you buy a tractor. Or start a forum to gather a lot of people that John Deere may listen to. But don't buy it and then start crying you don't like it.
And "by that logic" I shouldn't post on HN if I don't like downvotes. But I agreed to this system before I post. I won't whine about it afterwards since the possibility of being downvoted/offended existed before I commented. By your logic I should now start to pressure the government to do something about these awfull comments on HN, because I don't like them.
As a society, we have decided that some contract terms are unenforceable, as there is often an asymmetric balance of power between vendors and consumers.
For example, what if the tractor terms say that you couldn't vote Republican or you would have to surrender the tractor? Or you could only use brand-name repair shops. Or that you couldn't open the hood.
Farmers need tractors. It's not like they have the option to not have one and wait forever for a deal that's never going to happen.
Buying means change of ownership and just because you write something into a contract doesn't change that fact.
To finish your example, yes, I would expect the buyer to be able to hack the machine. They bought it and it is now theirs to do with as they please.
Ah, I get to alter conditions under which I buy stuff based on my need, this is great! It is what I always wanted! Problem is... When I sell stuff under certain conditions I'd like my conditions to be honored. Like when I sell you a wafer stepper to make computer chips, I like you not to copy my patented technologies so that I can never reach return on investment. Even if you bought the machine and you own it now. And most costumers promise not to do so and honor their promise.
In the tractor case, I'd feel more honest (and much better in general) if I would just buy a tractor of a different brand with less stringent conditions attached. Why would you reward a tractor company that sells you stuff under screwy conditions?
First you vote with your wallet and make a screwy company rich, then you complain. Perhaps you should think before you buy something. Or, get a group of people together and make a nice case to the manufacturer. Where do we end if we can just break any agreement we make based on need?
The honest way to get to hackable tractors is to not buy un-hackable tractors. I'm all for hackable tractors, I'm all for hackable everything! So lets buy products that are hackable!
> When I sell stuff under certain conditions I'd like my conditions to be honored.
Frankly, if there are conditions, then as far as I'm concerned you're not selling anything. Selling implies a change of ownership. You've done something, but not sold something.
If companies want to attach additional conditions, then they should have to call it something else, and make it clear that the agreement isn't a sale.
> Why would you reward a tractor company that sells you stuff under screwy conditions?
Probably because that tractor company is the only one left by either suing its competition, colluding with them to both adopt anti-consumer license agreements, buying them out, or lobbying politicians to making competition illegal by abuse of patent or copyright law.
> try to negotiate a deal before you buy a tractor
This is part of the problem. "Contracts" have become one-way rights-limiters which perverts their original intent: For two parties to negotiate terms of a transaction. What we have today are contracts being abused to limit consumers' rights, limit their use of court to challenge them (arbitration clauses), and absolve the corporation of all legal liability that may ever come out of that transaction.
I think that in our age where consumers have no rights, its perfectly ok to enter into one-sided "contracts", then violate the spirit of those contracts by appealing to lawmakers to give consumers their rights back.
Well, apparently you do what people on HN are suggesting here: You wait until someone else builds a hackable tractor, you buy it promising you won't hack it, then you complain about it and hope you can pressure the government into making it legal for you to hack the hackable tractor.
Why are people buying these annoying tractors anyway? The reason to me seems: They are worth the trouble.
Sure, but when the other option is "stop farming", what would you have them do? The typical farmer doesn't know how to build a tractor from scratch, just as the typical car-owner doesn't know how to reproduce a Honda Accord.
So I buy a different brand. Or I comply with the rules I accepted at buy-time. In this tractor case I'd be mad at myself that I missed such a shitty condition of the contract, I'd write a blog post about how shitty it is. I'd try to pressure the manufacturer into giving me more rights. But not via the government, that just seems unfair. John Deere invents something, they proudly bring it to market, people (who did not have a John Deere smart-tractors before) start complaining and now that want you to alter your beautiful product? Go away! John Deere does not force anyone to buy their stuff! Why would you be allowed to force them into complying with your needs?
> But not via the government, that just seems unfair.
> Why would you be allowed to force them into complying with your needs?
Here's the thing. They should be able to lease equipment with restrictions. However, if you're going to call it a sale, then I don't see why they should have the right to restrict your ability to modify it. A sale implies a change of ownership. If they can restrict what you can do with the product after you bought it, then there wasn't really a change of ownership, was there?
50 years back, to 1966, is still very much preferable to 150 years back, to 1866.
As huge a gulf in technology as that may be, retracing over ground that has already been surveyed once is much easier than blazing a trail through wilderness. It only takes 50 years to advance that far in technology the first time you try it. The second time around, it goes much faster and less expensively, especially for everything with lapsed patent protection.
That particular tractor is supposed to be a bootstrapping device, so that in the unlikely circumstance that we do lose the benefit of modern infrastructure, it can mostly be rebuilt before anybody forgets how or why.
With the benefit of the modern manufacturing infrastructure, anyone else could copy a 1995 model of Deere tractor and just leave off the trademark elements.
The LifeTrac is designed around the resources that a self-sustaining OSE community could likely produce or scavenge. It's basically what two people and a rudimentary machine shop could build in a reasonable period of time.
Again, given the run-up in prices for used, owner-repairable tractors, there may be a market for copying the most popular models for new manufacture, and leaving out anything still patented or trademarked. Serious farmers won't build their own LifeTrac unless it is impossible to get a factory-built tractor.
Actually this is what some farmers attempt to do - buy tractors that do not rely on complex electronics and software. However none of the major farm equipment manufacturers make such tractors anymore, so they've had to turn to the second-hand market. Consequently the prices of these second hand tractors has skyrocketed. What a strange world.
It is well established that agreeing to some conditions doesn't necessarily make those conditions legally binding. There are many circumstances under which they are not.
Interfering with this process reduces freedom.
Interfering with freedom is necessary, almost everywhere. The very fact that two people can come to an agreement that they would expect to be enforced is a massive interference in freedom. To say nothing of that fact that you seem to be happy to interfere in someone's freedom to tinker with things, but not happy to interfere in the freedom to restrict that freedom. Do you want this "freedom" of yours or not?
If a contract contains terms which are illegal or become illegal, depending how the contract is written it may in whole or in part be nullified.
It's seen a lot in apartment/house rental contracts, where the renter puts predatory terms in a contract which aren't allowed by local or state laws. They try to enforce because "you signed it" but a challenge in court sees the contract, or at least those terms, scrapped.
This might seem reasonable. But... this way, capable people will not benefit from markets of scale like they could if they were allowed to tinker with their purchased goods.
> All I see a big market opportunity for hackable, open-platform tractors.
Sadly, there is no big market opportunity for hackable, open-platform tractors.
i'll bet there is. think of what the PTO (power take-off) enabled in general for the common tractor.
i'll bet hydraulics, electrical generation, and other systems can also be leveraged by 3rd-party or custom gear.
in fact, I'll wager that the FUTURE of the tractor INSISTS upon it being open and hackable.
The "Lying EULA that attempts to rebrand a sale a lease"
approach is bad for customers and bad for the world at large. It limits human innovation. Human innovation is what defines humanity. Perhaps we could just return to swinging in the trees and eating bananas unless our EULA allows us to walk upright and cook food with Fire(tm)
Pay attention, Tractor companies!
pay attention to your customers and stop listening to that shortsighted man in the pinstripe suit trying to cheapen your relationships that MATTER!
> i'll bet there is. think of what the PTO (power take-off) enabled in general for the common tractor. i'll bet hydraulics, electrical generation, and other systems can also be leveraged by 3rd-party or custom gear.
You mean a common platform, similar to what iOS is in the computing world? Sounds nice, but I guess we use a different definition of "open".
it will not matter economies of scale as the tinkerer cannot redistribute it. The tinkering is done in product already sold, like after market car parts. The tinkerer can tinker with as many tractors as he wish, even for money, but those modification is done with consent of owner on something that he already owns. If i brick something in process i should be able to replace it with factory stuff, like in case with if the said tractor's axil gets broken
This train of thought leads me back to software practices where all features exist in the software, but the level of license you pay for unlocks certain features (that are already installed), so if you allow hacking of the control module, you could theoretically unlock features you hadn't paid for... this would be a major concern for the developer.
