How technologically far ahead would we be compared to now if all knowledge was shared and all institutions published their work in an open-source area?

Please assume all knowledge is used for good and no illegal schemes are hatched

So there's never been a single malicious person in all of history?

Oh, in that case the Mediterranean Federation and its satellite states, the African Federation, Arabia, and Iran, would long ago have joined hands with the Middle Republic and Grand India. Together, the Grand Alliance would have welcomed the Dreamers and Oceania into their fold before reaching out and discovering the paradise lands of the United Fires and the Free Cities.

Since by this time most communicable disease would be eradicated, the Human Community would waste little time in exchanging useful inventions, knowledge, and biological wealth. Chickens, potatoes, horses: the Great Exchange would ignite a massive growth in wealth and well-being.

By what we would call the year 1000, all humans would be happy and fed, and zoos across the world would house passenger pigeons, dwarf mammoths, elephant birds, and all the other wonders our greed and wastefulness have driven from the world. But into this paradise would come great dissatisfaction, as the optics of the explorers would be refined and the true depths of the universe would become apparent.

Boompowder, long a simple curiosity, would be resurrected and entire fields of science long neglected would blossom. The spread of boompowder will revolutionize mining and civil engineering, and within a century the basics of our Industrial Revolution will be ready for deployment (after careful consideration of the human and environmental impacts, of course).

The Great Industrial Project will be completed by 1350, and all of humanity will gather around the radios and televisions distributed free of charge to all community centers, where together they will delight in the first human explorations of orbital space. Once a month, new results return from robotic probes across the Solar System. By 1400, Hope Station houses a permanent population in orbit of 40 astronauts.

On October 12, 1492, Atahualpa Cheng is the first human to set foot on Mars.

/r/AskReddit Thread