[PLUG-TALK] Farm equipment repair: software key issue
Keith Lofstrom
keithl at kl-ic.com
Mon Apr 10 20:27:38 UTC 2017
On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> If you know folks who might be interested in replacing proprietary
> software with F/OSS versions, this might be a Good Thing(TM) to do.
On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 06:25:01AM -0700, Pete Lancashire wrote:
> And instantly void the warranty on your > $100,000 tractor
Before I spent $100,000 on anything, I would make sure it
was repairable and supportable. One of the big drivers in
my transition to open source was the purchase of expensive
proprietary software with warranties that were subsequently
not supported.
If a John Deere tractor comes with draconian third party
upgrade penalties and untrustworthy support, I'd buy a
Chinese tractor instead. The software bundled with that
tractor might be a year behind, but I'd rather stay a
year behind rather than lose control over my production
process.
I bought IBM laptops because of their flexible user
support, especially regards Linux. They designed their
BIOS upgrades to be Linux compatible, even tested them
against multiple distros. Knowing that Linux users
often customize kernels, when I sent a Thinkpad in for
factory service, they would call me for permission to
upgrade the BIOS, just in case I had made an experimental
kernel mod that might conflict with the newer BIOS.
Indeed, if I was selling expensive gear like tractors to
site-specific users like production and experimental farms,
I would make sure it was extremely customizable, so that
the agricultural discoveries my users make could be made
available to help my other users as soon as possible.
Keith
--
Keith Lofstrom keithl at keithl.com
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