As you said yourself: "open source industry" Voluntary fire brigades, et al: My bad on the miscommunication, I was talking about "throughout history": As a re

As you said yourself: "open source industry" Voluntary fire brigades, et al: My bad on the miscommunication, I was talking about "throughout history": As a result what I meant was: I can't think of any [morally exceptional people] which [past their own lifetimes] continue to improve our current day-to-day lives. You are correct though that morally exceptional people do have a (slight) positive impact to my day-to-day. I just haven't seen a case where their contributions transcended time. Similar to the contributions of say: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Bell, person who first repeatedly sparked fire, etc. The contributions of religious figures transcend time. But you could argue either way about their contributions being beneficial to our day-to-day. Again it would be debatable if it was in the best interest of these religious figures to spread their personal ideology. Either of these debates would be inherently biased towards your take on religion.