Software Could Re-define Ownership in the USA

[foxaudio...@gmail.com]

This is a disturbing development.

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

We need open source cars, tractors and well... everything now.

B

[hughag...@gmail.com]

If you buy a tractor and get a warranty with the deal, then the concept of ownership is already pretty fuzzy --- that is a lot like leasing --- and, realistically, who is going to buy a diesel tractor and take on the responsibility of repairing it himself?

BTW: I worked on a cattle ranch not long ago, so I spent a lot of time driving a big green tractor in a slow inward spiral around the hay field.

[Cecil Bayona]

Apparently there are several reasons for rebelling against this
procedure, John Deere charges an arm and leg to repair the tractor but
worse yet they make you wait before they repair it, when the harvest is
ready you can't sit around waiting a week for John Deere mechanic to
show up, so a lot of people are turning to installing hacked software
that has no restrictions so the farmers can find out what is wrong and
order the parts themselves.

--
Cecil - k5nwa

[hughag...@gmail.com]

In my experience, the John Deere mechanic shows up the next day. It is expensive though. I agree that using this high-tech equipment puts the rancher at the mercy of a big corporation.

Ultimately, it all comes down to our relation with Mexico. That rancher that I worked for previously used gasoline-powered equipment that he could repair himself. He was bailing the small 80-pound bails (known as "idiot cubes"). These are highly labor intensive, so he had a crew of employees working for him --- mostly illegal aliens from Mexico. He said that he was feeding about 250 bails per day to his cattle, which he considered to be ridiculous --- this takes a crew of about 20 guys --- he wanted to switch to the big round bails that a single guy (himself) could feed to the cattle. Also, there was a lot of anti-Mexican sentiment in town. People complained that the Mexicans didn't speak English properly --- some of the wives were working in town as cashiers at the store or maids at the motel, etc., and they couldn't communicate well. Also, the men weren't welcome drinking at the tavern --- I heard there were some fights, although I didn't see this myself. The rancher I worked for had a mobile home that some workers were living in, and it burned down (a grease fire in the kitchen got out of hand; the guys may have been drunk). I don't know if these were Mexicans or Gringos though.

Anyway, all the Mexicans got driven out. The ranchers sold their gasoline-powered equipment to hobbyist farmers and switched to diesel-powered equipment. They mostly bail the big round bails (that is what the rancher I worked for did) or sometimes the big square bails --- these weigh about one and a half tons and are handled using heavy-equipment (a front-loader with the bucket replaced by a spear that sticks into the middle of the round bail).

I don't think this is a good idea. They become too dependent upon America's infrastructure continuing to function smoothly. This could fail though. We could have an collapse of the dollar and/or a war with Iran and/or a collapse of law-and-order in the cities (due to the meth-heads getting out of control), all of which could cause the infrastructure to stutter. If the John Deere mechanic doesn't show up, the rancher really has a serious problem --- there is no plan-B --- the tractors have to continue functioning all the way through the haying, or the hay will be ruined and the cattle will die (and, btw, it is illegal for a rancher to slaughter his own cattle now; by law he has to sell them at the auction to the big slaughter houses).

I think it is better idea to just improve our relation with Mexico. Reintroduce the Bracero Program or something similar. Acting like a racist jerk really has consequences --- this could result in the collapse of the American farming system --- ironically, we would then have to buy food from foreign countries that we had been racist against.

Also, the drug cartels in Mexico are out of control. People are getting murdered willy-nilly and dumped on the sidewalk, or taken to the desert and tortured. This is America's fault. We consume too much meth and crack, and we pour billions of dollars into the drug cartel's coffers. Also, we made mota illegal, which turns mota into a cash cow for the drug cartels unnecessarily; it would be better to make it legal, so Americans could just grow it themselves in their backyards. Primarily though, we use foreign-aid to empower sociopaths in Mexico and generally wreck the Mexican economy --- this results in poverty and despair --- this results in the young males joining the local drug cartel as sicarios because they have no other future. We need to take responsibility for the damage that we have caused and stop screwing up their economy with foreign-aid. If we don't do this, the violence in Mexico will begin spilling over into American border cities. Donald Trump is an idiot --- that wall of his is a 13th century solution to a 21st century problem --- it is not going to work.

[hughag...@gmail.com]

On Monday, April 24, 2017 at 6:12:02 PM UTC-7, foxaudio...@gmail.com wrote:

> We need open source cars, tractors and well... everything now.

I consider open-source software to be a disturbing development --- this is basically Marxism --- do we really want computer programming to be a service industry in which programmers charge for their time but they do not own the fruits of their labor?

[foxaudio...@gmail.com]

I guess it could be seen that way. But when you code for a corporation you don't own the code either. Is that Marxism in disguise? All we did was create a
pretend entity in law called the corporation and the result is the same to the coder.

(just rolling your idea around)

B

[hughag...@gmail.com]

Empowering the corporations is fascism (called "corporatism" by Benito Mussolini) --- taking people's property rights away from them is called communism --- fascism and communism are "opposames" in that they have the same result for the people, as you pointed out.

The solution is small-business ownership.

[Cecil Bayona]

Nobody forces anyone to do anything, Open Software can be nice but there
is always room for Commercial software.

How many years did it take Windows to have a nice looking interface? Zip
right off the bat it was fine, How many years did it take Linux to have
a nice looking interface, many years and many of the Open software still
looks like a cartoon, why? The geeks that make that stuff rather work
from the command line so the interface is not a priority, commercial
software on the other hand has to appeal to the customer or it doesn't
sell, if it doesn't sell then they can't afford that BMW. Greed is a
great motivator to make things better.

My uncle had a large farm in Cuba, him and two partners bought large
pieces of land, and combines to harvest the crops, they were doing well,
buying more land, and growing a ton of food. Along came communism, his
land was no longer his, but it belonged to the State, they took his
combines to be shared with other farmers, they didn't take care of them
after all they didn't have to make sacrifices to acquire them and were
wrecked in not time, the result was no food production. And idiots here
want Socialism and Communism they have no clue about what happens when
Socialist and Communist take over.

--
Cecil - k5nwa

[Cecil Bayona]

He gets paid a salary for his work, and he knows up front who will own
the software it's up to him to make the decision with Marxism there is
no decision to make, you do as you are told.

--
Cecil - k5nwa

[hughag...@gmail.com]

On Monday, April 24, 2017 at 9:06:59 PM UTC-7, hughag...@gmail.com wrote:
> Primarily though, we use foreign-aid to empower sociopaths in Mexico and generally wreck the Mexican economy --- this results in poverty and despair --- this results in the young males joining the local drug cartel as sicarios because they have no other future. We need to take responsibility for the damage that we have caused and stop screwing up their economy with foreign-aid.

There are two common tricks used for screwing up a foreign economy:

1.) Provide foreign-aid if the people elect a criminal who wants to plunder, but withhold the foreign-aid and/or institute an austerity program if the people elect an honest candidate who wants to help the people. The result is corruption and crime, which tends to bankrupt the small business because they have to pay protection money to prevent themselves from becoming victims of crime.

2.) Provide food as charity. For example, provide corn to Mexico for free so they can make their tortillas. This results in the local farmers going bankrupt because they can't compete against free. When they go bankrupt, buy their land at pennies on the dollar, then convert the land into growing a crop that is exported to America rather than a food crop that feeds the local people. The result is famine.

America has been using these tricks for a long time to wreck the foreign economies. The irony is that now China is doing the same thing to America. China sells products to WalMart at a very low cost. This tends to bankrupt American businesses because they can't compete against the low prices. After the businesses are bankrupt, China buys them for pennies on the dollar and ships the equipment to China. Either that, or the business just sells its equipment to a scrap-metal dealer. The result is that America loses its manufacturing ability. Later on, China will stop selling their products to WalMart for a low cost, but will sell for a high cost, and this will wreck the American economy. This trick works well because Americans are too focused on instant gratification --- they spend a lot of money on cheap plastic junk that doesn't last and has no utility value --- we are going to end up with a surplus of cheap plastic junk, and a wrecked economy. Imagine Americans starving to death while surrounded by televisions and smart-phones and laptop-computers, etc. --- if you haven't eaten in a week, you could get on your smart phone and contact everybody you know on Facebook, but they say: "Yes, we are starving too --- but have you seen the latest viral youtube video of an idiot risking his life in a dangerous stunt? --- thank God for the internet!"

[rickman]

Yeah, the right to repair movement is gaining momentum. I've been
watching it for a couple of years now and it is starting to show up in
mainstream media... unless that is just fake news. Hard to tell.

One of the funny things is that the "hacked software" is often provided
from eastern countries. While they could never be held liable for their
software doing any damage, they have to maintain a reputation or
business would suffer. Seems the large farm implement companies don't
care so much about reputation.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

Yes, idiots lacking greed is our biggest problem. We need more greed!

--

Rick C

[Cecil Bayona]

Move to Cuba or better yet North Korea, there only the State can be greedy.

--
Cecil - k5nwa

[Anton Ertl]

Note that open source is not enough. There is one camp in the free
software movement that sees end user rights as paramount, while
another camp has mainly the programmers' rights in mind. This does
not result in the same position in all cases. In particular, the
first camp is against Tivoization (similar to the John Deere case),
while the second camp finds it acceptable; the GPLv3 is intended to
prevent Tivoization of GPLv3 software, and has therefore been rejected
by Linus Torvalds, who wrote that Tivo had the right to determine what
software runs on their devices (referring to devices that Tivo had
produced and *sold* to customers).

Interestingly, the article above also says " Product makers don’t like
people messing with their stuff", as if the product makers were still
the owners after selling the product.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
EuroForth 2017: http://www.euroforth.org/ef17/

[Mark Wills]

On Tuesday, 25 April 2017 05:32:55 UTC+1, Cecil - k5nwa wrote:
> My uncle had a large farm in Cuba, him and two partners bought large
> pieces of land, and combines to harvest the crops, they were doing well,
> buying more land, and growing a ton of food. Along came communism, his
> land was no longer his, but it belonged to the State, they took his
> combines to be shared with other farmers, they didn't take care of them
> after all they didn't have to make sacrifices to acquire them and were
> wrecked in not time, the result was no food production. And idiots here
> want Socialism and Communism they have no clue about what happens when
> Socialist and Communist take over.
>
> --
> Cecil - k5nwa

Exactly right. I lived for three years in Kazakhstan, and a year in
Uzbekistan. Every town I went to in KZ was the same: Run down and just
awful. The reason? Nobody owns anything, so nobody has an interest in
maintaining anything.

Things have changed now as private enterprise is taking hold very fast
indeed, but when I was there they were only ten years out of communism
and the communist ideology was still there.

[lehs]

Expropriation is not communist idea as such. In all time conquerors did it. Kings have in all
time awarded their trusty knights with others proprties. And what was Castro if not a king?

The contradiction between open and commercial software is an antagonistic one, since
industry want to copyright anything, even genes. There is a fork for humanity, not far away...

[rickman]

On 4/25/2017 2:10 AM, Cecil Bayona wrote:
> On 4/25/2017 12:54 AM, rickman wrote:
>> On 4/25/2017 12:32 AM, Cecil Bayona wrote:
>>> Greed is a
>>> great motivator to make things better.

>> Yes, idiots lacking greed is our biggest problem. We need more greed!
>>
> Move to Cuba or better yet North Korea, there only the State can be greedy.

Actually I am going to try going to Cuba this summer. Not sure if the
government will allow me to.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

On 4/25/2017 3:39 AM, Anton Ertl wrote:
> foxaudio...@gmail.com writes:
>> This is a disturbing development.
>>
>> https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/
>>
>> We need open source cars, tractors and well... everything now.
>
> Note that open source is not enough. There is one camp in the free
> software movement that sees end user rights as paramount, while
> another camp has mainly the programmers' rights in mind. This does
> not result in the same position in all cases. In particular, the
> first camp is against Tivoization (similar to the John Deere case),
> while the second camp finds it acceptable; the GPLv3 is intended to
> prevent Tivoization of GPLv3 software, and has therefore been rejected
> by Linus Torvalds, who wrote that Tivo had the right to determine what
> software runs on their devices (referring to devices that Tivo had
> produced and *sold* to customers).
>

> Interestingly, the article above also says " Product makers don’t like

> people messing with their stuff", as if the product makers were still
> the owners after selling the product.

When I looked up Tivoization I found that Torvalds was *not* opposed to
GPLv3. 'Linus Torvalds said he was "pretty pleased" with the new
draft's stance on DRM.[18]'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization#GPLv3

http://archive.is/20120713115859/http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6171300-7.html

Is this reference out of date?

--

Rick C

[Andrew Haley]

Cecil Bayona <cba...@cbayona.com> wrote:
>
> Nobody forces anyone to do anything, Open Software can be nice but there
> is always room for Commercial software.

This dichotomy betweek open source and commerce isn't real. The
difference is between proprietary software, which you don't have the
right to change, study, and redistribute, and free (as in freeedom)
software, which you do. Open Source software isn't all commercial,
but a lot of it is. Open Source is big business.

> How many years did it take Windows to have a nice looking interface?

Many.

Andrew.

[Anton Ertl]

rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> writes:
>On 4/25/2017 3:39 AM, Anton Ertl wrote:
>> Note that open source is not enough. There is one camp in the free
>> software movement that sees end user rights as paramount, while
>> another camp has mainly the programmers' rights in mind. This does
>> not result in the same position in all cases. In particular, the
>> first camp is against Tivoization (similar to the John Deere case),
>> while the second camp finds it acceptable; the GPLv3 is intended to
>> prevent Tivoization of GPLv3 software, and has therefore been rejected
>> by Linus Torvalds, who wrote that Tivo had the right to determine what
>> software runs on their devices (referring to devices that Tivo had
>> produced and *sold* to customers).

...

>When I looked up Tivoization I found that Torvalds was *not* opposed to
>GPLv3. 'Linus Torvalds said he was "pretty pleased" with the new
>draft's stance on DRM.[18]'
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization#GPLv3
>
>http://archive.is/20120713115859/http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6171300-7.html
>
>Is this reference out of date?

I don't think it fully represents his position. The bottom line is
that he thinks that Tivoization is acceptable, and he chooses GPLv2-only for
his software because of that.

Anyway, the point is that open source software is not enough to ensure
that you have control over the hardware. Not in Tivo devices, and
probably not in John Deere machinery, either. A license like GPLv3
probably helps, or some legislative measures (but John Deere probably
has more money for getting the best laws that money can buy).

[rickman]

And they still can't stop the eastern block hackers from making tractors
repairable again. They can refuse to sell you parts though and I
believe that is what the dispute is about.

As they said in some commercial a long time ago, "Parts is parts".

--

Rick C