Commons Architecture

Commons are made of three essential bricks: resources, people, and then rules and standards which allow to link all these components.
Fisrt brick is material. It refers to actual resources: water, earth, genetic code, software codes, knowledges, algorithms and cutural technics ; it refers also to the time we display, and naturally to the atmosphere. All this constitutes « common pool resources ». Each of us has an equal right to use them.
The second brick is social. It refers to human beings using those resources. The concept of commons is unthinkable unless reported to real individuals acting in a defined social space. Knowledges, i.e. all those using resources collectively , turning them into commons.
The third brick is regulatory. It encompass rules and standards which govern the relation with commons. Clearly, it is not the same to regulate bytes and information and to regulate natural resources such as water or forests. The relation with those things have different forms. But what these relations share is that they have to be defined by wide communties of users. And this can only occur when a human group develops a common understanding of his relationship with resources.

Resources + Communities + Rules and standards = Commons