Scott Smith, component systems and integration manager for Honey Bee Manufacturing, is pictured next to one of the company's headers.
Some companies make their products incompatible with other brands, citing copyright reasons, though critics say it prevents competition. Normally associated with the tech industry, the tactic is showing up in new sectors, like farm equipment manufacturing. A new bill hopes to change that.Scott Smith, component systems and integration manager for Honey Bee Manufacturing, is pictured next to one of the company's headers.
"Can you fix the thing that you own? Can you buy products that interoperate with the thing that you own? These are fundamental freedoms," said Kyle Wiens, a U.S.-based right-to-repair advocate and founder of the iFixit online repair guide.Chris Allam is operations manager at the Allam Farms Partnership in Ardrossan, Alta. Apple has also been criticized over the issue. For years, its phones didn't work with the USB-C connector that's become standard for many other devices.
"The farmer, out of frustration, will end up spending more money just buying two things that are the same brand so they work together," said Allam, who grows wheat, barley, canola and other crops on his farm east of Edmonton.Wiens of iFixit pointed to John Deere's X-9 combine, a grain harvesting machine. That combine, currently listed online for more thanused, features a digital port that prevents it from being used with non-John Deere implements, he said.
The industry has developed by creating specialty products that are tailored to Canadian crops and topography — those products are also of interest to countries with similar conditions, like Australia and Ukraine.
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