Hello everyone,
I’ve been wondering, why has no one built an entirely free (as in freedom) computer yet? For humans to be unable to share each other’s knowledge to build one of the most important technologies ever created for society, how is it that we have yet to have full knowledge about how our systems operate?
I get that companies are basically the ones to blame, and I know there are alternatives like the Talos II by Raptor Computing, but still, how do we not have publicly available full schematics for just one modern computer? I’m talking down to firmware-level stuff like proprietary ECs, microcode, hard drive/SSD firmware, network controllers, etc. How do we not have a fully open system yet?
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).