In 2017, Apple and John Deere famously joined forces in Nebraska to fight an early R2R bill. An Apple lobbyist told Nebraska legislators that passing the bill would make the state a "Mecca for hackers," a talking point that has since been used by various industries to argue that opening up hardware leads to security risks. [1] There is a very real need for manufacturers to lobby through shared organizations because they recognize that a Right to Repair victory for one product is legally and logically a victory for all products.
The problem is that both sides are correct. The core of the R2R argument is about ownership instead of merely "licensing" from the manufacturer. Repair monopolies create an artificial scarcity, destroying economic efficiency, market competition and planned obsolescence (defeating environmental stewardship). A centralized repair model is a single point of failure, weakening resilience and national security.
Manufacturers have a strong argument against right-to-repair from the perspective of system integrity and safety - one can imagine unintended consequences and liability cascades from imperfect repair. Protection of intellectual property isn't just about software piracy and trade secrets, as opening up firmware access creates a cybersecurity nightmare of backdoors, raising environmental and regulatory compliance issues. The authorized dealer model isn't just about a monopoly - it’s about a guaranteed standard of care.
The current compromise is a subscription-based access model Memorandum of Understanding, where for a tiered subscription the John Deere customer gets a restricted version of the dealer's software [2]. The "Gotcha" in the MOU is that many farmers feel this was a bad trade because the manufacturer can change the price or the terms of the website at any time — whereas a law would be permanent.
I live in Japan, and our repair framework feels weak.
A lot of it is based on industry association rules (業界団体ルール), not enforceable regulation. For example, major electronics companies sometimes disclose a parts retention period (部品保有期限), like keeping parts for X years, but that is mostly traditional large companies.
On repair policy/enforcement, the EU and US seem more advanced than Japan. That is why stories like this (farmers pushing back on dealer lock-in and repair access) are interesting to me.
Do we need right to repair anymore with AI? Could you get Claude to code an entire tractor software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in the tractor? In other words just use the tractor for it's hardware?
Aside from the legal question whether the manufacturer allows you to do so, I’m pretty excited about somebody vibe coding firmwire to a 35 ton machine with a bunch of big attachments at the back and plenty of ways to mangle the bodies of careless operators without the rpm so much as audibly rising from strain. Should give us plenty of videos to traumatize the next generation of children with a little bit too much internet access at an early age. I feel nostalgic for those days.
(This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)
As long as you have a sufficient test suite you could probably run a Ralph Wiggum loop and have it brute force it. Creating the test suite would be harder though.
The phrase "sufficient test suite" is doing a LOT of work here. You would need to know what the data from every sensor is supposed to be along with how every piece of the machine is supposed to perform. AI isn't going to be able to iterate into those parameters over night.
I've never been fond of the argument that there should be a professional software engineer certification, but hearing people like you being presented with the potential dangers and just going 'oh yeah just go with a better test suite and you can just wing it' makes me seriously reconsider.
Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.
What a great idea! what could possibly go wrong allowing farmers with no expertise in writing firmware for gigantic farm equipment, overseeing code output from an LLM and then uploading it to the aforementioned gigantic farm equipment?
Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
"Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth.
The Ukranian farming community birthed cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc.
#NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
That’s not what this is about, it’s about access to dealership level diagnostic software.
But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!
Code is basically free now, I don't see why you can't just write the diagnostic software yourself. In 6-12 months you won't even need diagnostic software, Claude will be able to just generate custom introspection and diagnostic code tailored to the exact issue.
Half the process of jailbreaking electronics involves reverse-engineering. There's some promising work in that direction, but reverse-engineering is still not AI's strong suit.
Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break.
Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201.
The problem is that both sides are correct. The core of the R2R argument is about ownership instead of merely "licensing" from the manufacturer. Repair monopolies create an artificial scarcity, destroying economic efficiency, market competition and planned obsolescence (defeating environmental stewardship). A centralized repair model is a single point of failure, weakening resilience and national security.
Manufacturers have a strong argument against right-to-repair from the perspective of system integrity and safety - one can imagine unintended consequences and liability cascades from imperfect repair. Protection of intellectual property isn't just about software piracy and trade secrets, as opening up firmware access creates a cybersecurity nightmare of backdoors, raising environmental and regulatory compliance issues. The authorized dealer model isn't just about a monopoly - it’s about a guaranteed standard of care.
The current compromise is a subscription-based access model Memorandum of Understanding, where for a tiered subscription the John Deere customer gets a restricted version of the dealer's software [2]. The "Gotcha" in the MOU is that many farmers feel this was a bad trade because the manufacturer can change the price or the terms of the website at any time — whereas a law would be permanent.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2018/02/01/apple-verizon-continue-t...
[2] https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/repair/customer-service...
(This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)
Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.
Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
"Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth.
The Ukranian farming community birthed cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc.
#NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!
Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break.
Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201.
Law is code.