28 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
# RFC-0006: Inheritance
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**Status:** Proposed
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**Phase:** The Bedrock Phase
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## Abstract
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This RFC proposes that inheritance — the active reception and transmission of engineering knowledge across generations — be formalized as a core concept of the Open Engineer standard.
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## Motivation
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Engineering knowledge does not spring from nothing. Every engineer builds on the work of those who came before. Without a formal concept of inheritance, the standard lacks a mechanism for describing how knowledge flows through time.
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## Observation
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The most enduring engineering traditions — from ancient Roman bridge building to modern aerospace engineering — share a common characteristic: they explicitly value the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. When that transmission breaks down, knowledge is lost and must be re-derived, often at great cost.
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## Engineering Principle
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Engineers inherit responsibilities as well as resources. Engineering artifacts should be created with stewardship and long-term inheritance in mind.
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## Reasoning
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Inheritance is the temporal dimension of engineering context. Context preservation (RFC-0003) is meaningless if there is no mechanism for passing preserved context forward. Inheritance provides that mechanism. Combined with stewardship (RFC-0005), it creates a complete model for the intergenerational flow of engineering knowledge.
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## Relationship to Existing Concepts
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Inheritance is defined in OE-0010. It is the downstream partner of Stewardship (OE-0009, RFC-0005) and the operational manifestation of the Thread (OE-0001). It connects to the historical observation that ancient engineering was unified before disciplines separated — a unification that inheritance makes possible. |