why though? in my experience, people don't really care about that, especially big entities buying in bulk. just give me what's fastest per dollar.
The processor could benefit from crowdsourcing development to some extent.
Also, in countries that aren't America (and for many entities in America) there could be huge value assigned to knowing with a higher confidence that your vendor isn't handing over a backdoor to three-letter agencies
Finally, FLOSS enthusiasts will go crazy for it, which might not be a huge boost to AMD/Intel but is at least something.
It may be an indirect way to get more talented and idealistic individuals going to AMD versus Intel.
I don't know much about the subject, so these are all my guesses as to the biggest advantages. Who knows if they outweigh the perceived disadvantages from their perspective.
AMD or Intel processors also definitely aren't good candidates for crowdsourcing. Their R&D probably spends more on coffee than the largest crowdsourced projects raised.
That includes the option for developers to improve the limitations of a platform they're building on top of instead of working around them. My thinking was that the people who would want to do that when it comes to an open processor would be kernel developers.
However your point is good about the R&D, and I bet Intel/AMD spend a LOT of money/resource on those backdoors. But the open source world has done a lot in the past. Linux is a massive open source project and arguably very successful an innovative.
But I do get your point, at this stage it's still a smaller percentage of people who care vs those who don't. But if they capture this market early, couldn't they secure their business for the next X years?