Chris Berube

It's replacement parts.

So if Jared buys a replacement part, he probably needs to buy it from John Deere because he doesn't have a lot of options for where else you can buy the thing.

I'm getting very angry, Chris.

This is very upsetting to me.

Keep some room, okay?

Keep some room.

We need a ceiling that we can achieve later on in the episode.

You're going to get there.

So, Roman, in the past, farmers could actually buy a generic replacement part, right?

Like a part that was built by somebody who isn't John Deere.

But today, with the software, John Deere does this trick called parts pairing.

So if you want to replace a drill, something like that, certain parts are not going to work unless they are compatible with John Deere software.

So that's parts pairing.

And this is related to this really important concept called interoperability.

I've definitely heard that term before.

But what does it actually mean here?

Basically, interoperability is whether two things can work together, right?

So if you have shoes and shoelaces, if the laces are the right size, they fit inside the shoe, those two things are interoperable.

And in a digital context, two things are interoperable if they can talk to each other.

And parts pairing makes that difficult because with tractors, you know, you can buy some generic parts that is cheaper than what John Deere is selling, but it won't necessarily work because John Deere software might lock it out.