<Cesar>Many people simplify freedom as “no constraints”. Wiser people think
that any freedom is a set of constraints. I personally think even differently, free-
dom is not a larger cage or less rules, but a potential of action, a generative
energy that expands the possibles.</Cesar>
<Usman>We propose putting together a licence for the open source in construc-
tion and design of cities, the Urban Versioning System. At the moment the docu-
ment is more a dogma or set of constraints, it is an OS, a quasi-licence, something
to chew on. You can build using these constraints to making an open source
architecture :
1. Build rather than design : that means don’t spend time presuming what you are
going to do, actually build it as you design.
2. Materials must come pre-broken : it is the idea that things should be hackable,
openable, other people can do things with them, they shouldn’t be seamless and
perfect.
3. Make joints : as we discussed, the idea that you make something that people
can plug into, rather than making the object themselves.
4. Rubbish is the roots of virtuosity : that means that in order to do something
spectacular your system has got to allow for real crap as well.
5. Collaborate with collaborators, that means that in a collaborative system you’ve
got to recognize the fact that you might be collaborating with who you completely
disagree with. If you shy away from that, it not necessarily going to be an open
system.
6. Copying or not copying is irrelevant, it just is.
7. Property must be invented : so this is not necessarily constraint, but it is saying
the current notion of property doesn’t make sense in the way we currently under-
stand architecture and construction, so it’s got to be invented through the project
itself.</Usman>
<Cesar> this is a very interesting set of rules, because they are as much initiatives 
(internal forces) as much as they are instructions (limitative rules), a method of
work that could produce any form. Still I believe, that is a bit too complicated to
generate a simple real open architecture.</Cesar>
<Nina>If you just have one clear starting point than the logic will generate from
that.</Nina>
<Teodora>It about the way the brain is organised : it is optimized to minimize
processing time.</Teodora>
<Cesar>What happens if you have more than one basic idea?</Cesar>
<Nina>With too many ideas, it collapses somehow.</Nina>