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OE-0010: Inheritance
Status: Draft Version: 0.2.0-draft Depends on: OE-0009 (Stewardship) Phase: The Bedrock Phase
Overview
Inheritance is the act of receiving and engaging with engineering knowledge from prior work.
Definition
Inheritance is the receive discipline: the responsibility to actively understand what has been passed down, not merely to possess it. Passive reception — storing documents without engaging with their reasoning — is not inheritance. Inheritance requires the practitioner to reconstruct the understanding behind the inherited context.
Inheritance Distinguished from the Thread
The thread (OE-0001) is the channel — the model of continuity itself. Inheritance is the act of engaging with what that channel carries. The thread's integrity (OE-0001) is measured by whether inheritance succeeds: can the inheriting practitioner reconstruct the original reasoning? If yes, the thread is intact. If no, the thread has broken at that point.
Inheritance Distinguished from Stewardship
Inheritance and stewardship (OE-0009) are coupled but distinct. See OE-0009 for the full distinction.
Inheriting Responsibilities
Practitioners inherit responsibilities as well as resources. Every engineering artifact comes with obligations: a bridge must be maintained, a specification must be kept current, a body of knowledge must be evaluated and extended. The inheriting practitioner assumes these obligations as part of receiving the artifact.
Single Responsibility
This document defines inheritance. It does not define stewardship (see OE-0009) or the thread (see OE-0001). It references them.
Applicable Laws
This document is governed by all Engineering Laws defined in laws/engineering-laws.md.