Requirements
Requirements are the features that the given machine must have. These are based on the general concept of the GVCS - machines that meet or exceed industry standards, and are sufficient to build a post-scarcity village infrastructure.
Requirements for OSE machines are based on Module Based Design - we focus on a design language where we identify a finite set of modules, and these modules are used to build any of the GVCS machines.
The motivation is that instead of building a number of machines, we can focus on building their modules - and thus gain the ability to build an unlimited number of variations of these machines.
The Specification narrows the development path from a general ideal to a specific implementation. The specification is a distillation of the Conceptual Design (how it's done) and Design Rationale (why it's done in a particular way) into a specific set of design parameters. Note that these properties are designed to be fixed in one implementation - yet they are overall flexible by virtue of Scalability, Modularity, and Design for Disassembly - which allow for many variations from a core design.
Protocol
- Start with a Requirements Spreadsheet
- Fill it out for your machine. Include simple diagrams and flowcharts.
- Publish on the wiki