Because it is not its core business? Look, anywhere you look, the government could, in theory step into production of X and save money. The government's version would always cost less, since you can subtract profits and the costs of features / expenditure to support other customers.

Why doesn't the US gov just create a telco? Or any large supplier, really?

This sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to put the state machinery in charge of managing things it's largely incapable of.

I'd much rather the government would show support either by donations (and let Apache Foundation / whomever manage their own thing), or just creating stimulus plans with the money saved (say, for example to make sure computers did not costs 3x as much in Brazil as they do in the US).

The public sector has many restrictions (elections every few years changing management, very much subject to political pressures, larger bureaucracy etc) that make it a bad competitor in a number of business.