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Why hasn't anyone built an entirely free computer yet?
(lemmy.world)
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They absolutely do fund development like this. But they keep it for themselves until such time that it no longer gives them a competitive edge.
For example, when the US sells tanks or planes to other countries, those export versions have much less fancy equipment on the inside. Or in pure science like cryptography, you can assume that when the NSA publicly approves of an algorithm, they're confident that they can break it if they really need to (either because they inserted a backdoor, have identified a weakness they can exploit, or just have no use for it any more themselves).