Ease of repair as a design ideal: A reflection on how open source models can support longer lasting ownership of, and care for, technology

Last spring, a series of online newspaper and magazine articles highlighted the story of the American farmers, who were hacking their tractors using Ukrainian software bought online (Naughton, 2017). After buying tractors from the wellknown brand John Deere, the world’s biggest manufacturer of agricultural machinery and products, the farmers were all facing the same problem. They realized that when their machine breaks they are not only legally obliged to call Deere’s customer service centre, which is the only entity entitled to analyse the tractor’s breakdown, but they also became aware that even when the service is slow, inefficient and overpriced, they cannot do much without violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (US Copyright Office, 1998). This legislation rules over the way people use a host of digital devices. and amongst other things, legally restrained the farmers from suing the company for loss of profit if the software results in non-performance