John Deere, which is the largest manufacturer of agriculture machinery in North America and one of the largest in the world, has been failing to meet the requirements of the software right-to-repair licenses they use "for some time." The most widely-deployed GPL software (ab)used by John Deere is Linux, Gingerich revealed, and most Linux distributions use several other programs covered by copyleft ("right to repair") licenses as well. As a result, farmers are essentially cut off from their livelihood if the equipment cannot be easily (and cheaply) repaired when it inevitably fails. The farm equipment manufacturer benefits immensely from the "readily-available software that they can provide as part of the farming tools," SFC said, but the company is doing so in direct violation of the right to repair licenses of said software components. On SFC's official blog, Denver Gingerich remarked how farmers have relied on their ability and "right" to fix their tools for thousands of years, which allowed agriculture to grow and improve "immeasurably." With a company like John Deere, Gingerich said, the right to repair farm tools is in serious jeopardy. Non-profit organization Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) said that the Moline, Illinois-based corporation has been essentially unwilling to follow the rules defined by the most popular open-source license "for multiple years." John Deere has been recently called out for its inability to properly handle open-source software according to the GPL license. As it turns out, the company provides very little support for third party access and right-to-repair initiatives despite infringing the GPL license for open-source software. What just happened? John Deere is one of the most serious offenders when it comes to forcing customers into a technology walled garden.
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