Yes, in the past I understood patents etc were supposed to help actually spur on new innovation. But the opposite seems to be happening. A hundred years ago one inventor would improve another's inventions and there seemed to be such progress. Now it is a legal minefield. But literally preventing someone from repairing a tractor, is criminal.

About 5 years ago, my country passed a law that we no longer needed to take our car back to the agent to be serviced, and warranties would not be voided. That increased competition a bit and gave consumers more choices.

But cars are going the same way as tractors - you need all the diagnostic computers etc to work on them. I grew up being able to change oil, filters, plugs, and adjust the timing, using a feeler gauge, etc. Back then, we could buy a workshop manual for every car. 

 yes exactly!

it seems that nowadays IP is mostly weaponized to make cooperation outside a silo like a large corporation (which can afford the necessary level of lawyering and licensing) impossible

software, for some reason has *mostly* escaped this fate for now, but it's true for everything else, everything is a legal minefield of patents, copyrights, it's almost impossible to make anything

> But cars are going the same way as tractors - you need all the diagnostic computers etc to work on them

and unfortunately, "computers" always has to mean locked-in closed source systems in this case, there's no why computer technology has to be like that, it could be serviceable, but there is so much economic and political power behind going in the other direction 

 Yes we've certainly seen open source software working well - some choose to pay to have it hosted for them, others are more savvy and host it free for themselves. It can end being a win-win-win.

I remember the beginning days when you could not buy a hard drive without having the pre-paid Windows OS on it. I remember the liberating feeling a while later when we could buy blank drives and format OS/2 Warp onto it. It's always big industry that tries to control their markets.