The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has asked farm equipment manufacturer John Deere to comply with its obligations under its General Public License (GPL). The GPL requires users of such software to share their source code.
in seconds blog post In a statement Thursday, Denver Gingerich, the SFC’s director of compliance, said the tool’s maker had failed to comply with its license agreement by using software covered by the GPL, limiting the ability of farmers to repair the tool. claim to be currently at risk.
“Sadly, farm equipment manufacturers who profit greatly from the off-the-shelf software they can offer as part of the equipment they sell to farmers (tractors, combines, etc.) do not comply with their right to repair licenses. It’s the software we chose to use with these farming tools,” says Gingerich.
“As a result, when farm equipment manufacturers do not want to repair their equipment when it inevitably breaks down, even if the farmer could easily fix it himself or with someone else’s help, the farmer would not be able to make a living. They will know.”
Gingerich named John Deere, based in Moline, Illinois, as a particularly vicious criminal. For years, the SFC has tried to work with John Deere to resolve the company’s violations, but the agricultural equipment maker has failed to cooperate, he said.
“When Deere replies (I’ve heard from others that their legitimate requests for source code have been taken in silence), they always say, ‘The Failed to include script. GPLv2‘ said Gingerich register.
“And even when we were already engaged with them and asked for a source for additional products, it took them over 10 months to send the first (again, incomplete) package.
keep the contract?
For years, repair advocates have complained about barriers preventing independent farmers from repairing their own John Deere equipment. Recently, however, these objections seem to have had some effect.
Facing multiple lawsuits from farmers. Department of Justice support And the White House, John Deere attacked in January transaction [PDF] We worked with the American Farm Bureau Federation to give farmers access to the inner workings of our equipment.
Proponents of the repair believe the deal was a success, but remain cautious because of the company made a similar transaction in 2018 That turned out to be insufficient – the deal did not provide access to tools for resetting security and immobilizer locks.
If SFC confirms it, the right to repair is best served by John Deere’s compliance with the GPL.
“As we have done personally over the years, John Deere was asked to provide complete source code, including the ‘scripts used to control the compilation’ of farm equipment. Publicly demand immediate resolution of all outstanding GPL violations across all lines. and provide the installation of executables required by the GPL and other copyleft licenses to farmers and others entitled to use them, under licenses that Deere chooses to use,” he said. Gingerich said in a post.
Gingerich said the most widely deployed GPL-covered software on Deere machines is Linux. “Like most Linux distributions, we also use a few other programs under a copyleft (i.e. right to repair) license,” he said.
Gingerich said the SFC supports other organizations challenging John Deere for alleged violations of contracts and laws, including antitrust violations.
Asked if the SFC might consider legal action, Gingerich said, “The existing lawsuit focuses on gaining access to software used by dealers to help repair tractors. This is also important, the SFC requires the full source code corresponding to the software, Deere runs on the farm machine itself as it must be provided by the license of the software used .”
John Deere did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ®
