I must disagree with you on one part (a minor one, true).

The 70s were not the dark ages: the late 70s and early 80s were the golden age of the personal computer. As pointed out by other of the commenters, the Apple II manual even included schematics for the computer itself and listings for its ROM-based BASIC interpreter.

You can't be more open than that.

Openness ended more or less when the PC made big advances into the home computer market and DOS and Windows made the personal computer a standardized commodity device.

And that's why I dislike PCs so much and why I am so fond on "exotic" architectures.

I am all in for open standards for interchanging information, but I also want my hardware to be as diverse as possible. I find a x86-only world absolutely boring.