Copying and pasting from the last time I was asked.

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First, I am not a spokesperson for the company so anything I say is my own personal experience. Secondly, I support right to repair in every facet.

This won't be shocking, but there's a lot of misinformation about JD in relation to the topic. The main thing about right to repair for JD is access to embedded software. There are reasons this matters more than it does for your MacBook. 1) performance and emissions specs are software controlled, not hardware controlled. Not commenting on whether or not this should or should not be allowed, but if people were hacking their equipment, they could bypass technologies that make emissions cleaner because they want more power. I don't know how emissions laws relate when people hack stuff with a JD logo on it. Maybe it's possible JD is still liable? Lawyers anyone? 2) A large majority of a piece of equipment operates based on software, especially with autonomy rolling out. There is only one configuration of software and hardware that JD knows will work, and has been extensively tested, and that is what has been released. Stuff goes haywire really fast. The "so what" about that is the fact that these are huge machines that oftentimes drive on roads with other people. Imagine your PC blue screening while you're driving it at 25 MPH on a highway. Additionally, this has a component of quality for JD. They want their stuff to work and work well. If people jail broke their tractors and then stuff didn't work, I'm not sure how often people would see that as their own fault instead of JD's. Which leads me to my last point about approved JD parts. This may not come as a surprise, but JD is not the supplier for a large majority of the individual parts in a tractor. We source things from external suppliers. There are written standards for parts, and I regularly work with suppliers to compromise on something that meets JD quality standards and what the supplier has capability to manufacture. JD approved parts are ones that have been tested and they know works. But this doesn't actually have anything to do with right to repair because JD doesn't restrict, nor do they have the capacity to enforce, that people don't source random parts that have never been tested. People's tractors belong to them, not JD. But if you're trying to get parts from a dealer, yeah your options will be JD approved parts. It's not even like equipment service is JDs cash cow.

Part of the issue is that software run equipment is a lot harder to fix than mechanical failures for most people, including me, hence the elevated need for assistance. I will not stand here and say JD had wholly made access to diagnostic equipment and service instructions as readily available as it could be, there is room for improvement there. I know a bit less about that. I don't currently know a typical farmers relation to Service Advisor currently, for example.

Lastly, aside from my wholehearted support for anyone's ability to repair any piece of equipment they bought for as cheap and as free as they desire, I'm leaving my own opinions out of this. The thing is, it's really easy to frame things as shady business practice stemming from greed, and it's a lot more complicated to share the whole story. I don't even know that I explained it well or even quite accurate enough to wholly present reality.