The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has published information on how one of the world’s largest manufacturers of agricultural tools violates the GNU GPL and the Right to Correction. John Deere, like some others, has been trying to limit owners’ repair rights through licensing and acta (ACTA) for a long time. According to the licenses for the built-in software, they are not allowed to manipulate the control unit and must visit an authorized service center for every repair.
According to the SFC, owners of this technology have always had the ability to make their own repairs in the past, which improved technical progress and allowed for further development. Each generation of farmers exercised the right to repair their implements. Thanks to this, agriculture developed and improved immensely. We take for granted the benefits it has brought us and the abundance of food it provides us.
But the current trend prevents farmers from repairing their own work tools. Sadly, agricultural machinery manufacturers who benefit enormously from the readily available software they can provide as part of the farm implements (tractors, combines, etc.) they sell to farmers do not respect the right to repair the software licenses they choose in these agricultural tools to use. As a result, farmers are cut off from their livelihood if the agricultural machinery manufacturer does not want to repair their farm implements, even though the farmer could easily do the repair himself or with the help of an acquaintance.
The SFC has been trying to resolve the issue with John Deere over the past few years, but it is said to still be in violation of the GNU GPL and not providing farmers with the technical details needed to make repairs. This is a serious problem that goes far beyond one person wanting to fix their printer software or install alternative firmware on a fancy device. It has far-reaching implications for the livelihoods of all farmers, for food security around the world, and for how we as a society choose to reward those who make our lives better.
The organization has now publicly called on John Deere to immediately address its violations of the GNU GPL across its entire line of agricultural equipment. It should therefore provide the complete source code, including the “scripts used to check the compilation and installation of the executable” required by the license. What Deere has provided to SFC to date falls far short of the requirements of the GPL, both with respect to this quoted text and many other parts of the license.
The organization also calls on farmers to join the fight for software freedom.
The Software Freedom Conservancy is a non-profit organization focused on ethical technology. Its mission is to ensure the right to repair, improve and reinstall the software. It promotes and defends these rights by supporting free and open source software (FOSS) projects and by promoting policy strategies that protect FOSS (for example copyleft).
