This is a move that's both badly needed and long overdue. Deere abuses copyright law to force farmers to pay for official repairs - even when the farmer does the repair. That's possible thanks to a practice called #VINLocking, in which engine parts come with #DRM that prevents the tractor from recognizing them until they pay hundreds of dollars for a John Deere technician to come to their farm and type an unlock code into the tractor's console:
https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8
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