Open License Society ______Only software can be perfect

Two weeks ago, during a holiday in Venice, Italy I had the oppportunity to visit an exhibition with replica's of Leonardo's da Vinci's inventions. It was really amazing to see how this man on his own invented most of the basic concepts that we still use everyday. To name just a few: an odometer, a clinometer, transformation of an alternate motion into a continous motion, a gearshift, a cam hammer, ball bearings, a spring, a flywheel and even a speed regulator. There are more examples, but most of these devices are essential in your car and the principles of operation have barely changed since Leonardo put them on paper.
What enabled this man to be so creative but practical at the same time? I found the answer on the backflap of a book that was edited on the occasion of this traveling exhibition: Leneorda applied occam's rule as a guiding system's engineering principle.

I quote: "When you wish to produce a result by means of an instrument do not allow yourself to complicate it by introducing many susidiary parts but follow the briefest way possible, and do not act as those do who when they do not know how to express a thing in its propper vocabulary proceed by a method of circumlocution and with great prolixity and confusion."

These principle are very much the principles we applied for the Systems2Trust methodology of Open License Society. It starts by defining a "systems grammar", essentially defining the terms and defining how they are linked. It's a first step in formalising the Systems Engineering Process (other people sometimes call this defining an ontology). Next comes the step where the "requirements and specifications" are mapped into a suitable architecture. Here the central paradigm is 'Interacting Entities". Amazingly, almost any system can be expressed in this paradigm, from a very high level to the smallest component in it. The paradigm also helps in separating the issues and by providing scalability. Interactions keep the details inside the entities and hence provide for scalability.

The results can be astonishing as well when applying them. As we found with the development of OpenComRTOS, the century old principles - although helped by the formal modeling - have allowed us to reinvent what most people would consider as a now "well proven and optimised" piece of software. OpenComRTOS is not only more scalable and performant than any other requivalent RTOS, it does it in about 10% of the code. And in this case, less is more once again. Smart Concepts make a Big Difference.

More information on Leonardo's devices' traveling exhibition: http://www.macchinedileonardo.com/