# OE-0009: Stewardship

**Status:** Draft
**Version:** 0.2.0-draft
**Depends on:** OE-0008 (Decisions)
**Phase:** The Bedrock Phase

## Overview

Stewardship is the obligation to maintain and improve engineering knowledge for future practitioners.

## Definition

Stewardship is the transmit discipline: the responsibility to pass engineering knowledge forward in better condition than it was received. A steward does not possess the knowledge — they hold it in trust, maintaining it and improving it before passing it onward.

## Stewardship Distinguished from Inheritance

Stewardship and inheritance (OE-0010) are coupled but distinct:

- **Stewardship** is the transmit direction. It governs how the current practitioner maintains, improves, and transmits knowledge.
- **Inheritance** is the receive direction. It governs how the next practitioner receives and engages with what has been transmitted.

A single generation performs both simultaneously — inheriting from the past and stewarding for the future. They are separated in the specification because they impose different obligations and face different failure modes. Stewardship fails through neglect. Inheritance fails through passivity.

## Implications

- Standard documents are stewarded, not owned.
- Contributions are evaluated on their value to future practitioners, not the status of the contributor.
- The standard's primary obligation is to clarity and preservation.

## Known Limitation: Incorrect or Obsolete Context

Stewardship includes the obligation to identify and flag context that has become obsolete or that was incorrect when inherited. Preservation is not blind accumulation. A steward must actively evaluate whether inherited understanding still reflects reality and, where it does not, document the discrepancy.

## Single Responsibility

This document defines stewardship. It does not define inheritance (see OE-0010). It references it.

## Applicable Laws

This document is governed by all Engineering Laws defined in `laws/engineering-laws.md`.