The archive · Hardware & Devices · Product decision · 2014–2022
Ronnie Baugh Tractors bets farmers will repair, not replace, an open-source Oggún
Former IBM engineer Horace Clemmons sells the $20,000 Oggún tractor, betting farmers will choose repairable open hardware over Deere's dealer-only model.
Ronnie Baugh Tractors
What the business is
Ronnie Baugh Tractors designs and sells the Oggún, a small open-platform tractor assembled from universal, off-the-shelf parts — $20,000 fully built and shipped from an Alabama warehouse, or licensed as a design for $250 per machine — so owners can repair and modify it with hardware-store parts.
How it started
Horace Clemmons, a former IBM engineer, argued that John Deere today is where IBM was in 1981 — a dominant supplier locking customers into proprietary parts and dealer-only repairs. In 2014 he and Cuban-born software entrepreneur Saul Berenthal built the Oggún for small-scale Cuban farmers: a tractor relying on a Honda engine and universal parts, with a design that is easy to modify. It was meant to be sold and manufactured in Cuba by local factories, but that partnership stayed contingent on the embargo lifting.
What happened
The Oggún went on sale worldwide at $20,000 — up from the original $10,000 as upgrades and manufacturing costs rose — and ships from a warehouse in Alabama where Clemmons's sole employee assembles it; others can license the design for $250 per machine built. Named customers treated it as a platform: Jack Algiere cut the frame, raised the floor six inches and re-welded it; Steven Crist of Hudson Valley Seed Company called a phone-guided repair massively simple; Minnesota farmer Dan Moe cultivates with a coat-hanger-narrow shovel. Clemmons also partnered with universities in Cambodia, Senegal and the Philippines to develop and manufacture the design locally. The piece itself notes the open-source paradigm still occupies only a marginal slice of the US farm equipment industry, and commenters questioned whether a paid design license meets the open-source standard.
How it ended up
Ronnie Baugh Tractors is still operating: ronnietractors.com, fetched on 2026-09-05, now offers the Oggun plans for free under an Open Systems license, markets the Oggun II and a family of tool carriers, and lists the business under Cleber, LLC — while open-source farm equipment overall remains a niche in US agriculture.
Background
Ronnie Baugh Tractors grew out of a comparison by Horace Clemmons, a former IBM engineer: John Deere today is where IBM was in 1981, a dominant supplier locking customers into proprietary parts and dealer-only repair. In 2014 he and software entrepreneur Saul Berenthal built the Oggún for small-scale Cuban farmers, a tractor that relies on a Honda engine and universal parts and is designed to be modified and repaired by its owners.
The business model sells the machine and the design: the Oggún is $20,000 assembled and shipped from Alabama, or its plans can be licensed for $250 per machine built, so farmers, local mechanics and regional manufacturers can reproduce it. Clemmons's named customers used it as a platform — Stone Barns Center's Jack Algiere cut the frame and re-welded it, Hudson Valley Seed Company's Steven Crist self-repaired with phone guidance, and Minnesota farmer Dan Moe adapted it for shallow cultivation.
Civil Eats profiled the tractor on 2022-04-27 in the middle of the right-to-repair fight over John Deere's software locks, and the story reached HN on 2022-08-28 with 148 points and 75 comments. The article itself reported that open-source farm equipment still occupies only a marginal slice of the US industry, and commenters debated whether a $250-per-sale design license counts as open source at all.
As of the 2026-09-05 fetch, ronnietractors.com still operates, now giving the Oggun plans away free under an Open Systems license and adding the Oggun II and smaller tool carriers under the Cleber, LLC entity — a niche business that kept running even as the open-source tractor movement stayed small.
What has to be true
- A concrete analogy drove the design: Clemmons lived through IBM's shift from closed mainframes to the open PC, and he saw Deere's dealer-only repair model as the same lock-in at an earlier stage.
- The product was shaped for its first users: small-scale and diversified farms that cannot justify big machinery and already expect to fix their own equipment.
- Pricing and licensing made the platform spreadable: a $20,000 assembled tractor or a $250-per-machine design license, plus university partnerships in Cambodia, Senegal and the Philippines.
- The economics of repair are the pitch: every part is available at a corner hardware store, so owners skip dealer visits and labor costs, which the quoted customers said repaid the purchase price.
- The limits were visible in the same source: US farm equipment is concentrated among three closed manufacturers, and activists questioned whether paid licensing is genuinely open-source.
What can be applied
Dealer-only repair lock-in opens a real market for open architecture, but it works only where buyers already tinker, and the seller must make machines pay while giving designs away.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-05, Ronnie Baugh Tractors is still live: ronnietractors.com presents the business under Cleber, LLC, offers the Oggun plans for free under an Open Systems license, and markets an expanded family — the Oggun II, a hand-tool carrier and the RUNT two-wheel carrier — sharing a two-inch toolbar. The 2022 feature recorded the company shipping assembled Oggúns from an Alabama warehouse with one employee; its January 2023 update noted John Deere's MOU with the American Farm Bureau to admit independent mechanics, which PIRG said should not end right-to-repair lawmaking.
Sources
- In the Battle Over the Right to Repair, Open-Source Tractors Offer an Alternative
- In the battle over the right to repair, open-source tractors offer alternatives (HN discussion)
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