What I got from reading TFA was that Burning Man's lawer (who used to be head lawer at the EFF) has found this to be the most reasonable way to accomplish their goals. They looked at many other ways, but the choices they have are limited by the law. They continue to have discussions on how to not take too much away, but their lawers haven't figured it out yet.
More transparency would be nice. This blog post was a good start, although something formal describing what they are attempting and why they chose the option they did would be even better IMO.

I know some technomads and they have a post on different LIP lifestyles that may be of interest.
http://www.technomadia.com/2009/05/digital-location-independent-lifestyle-designing-nunomads/

I use Nagios and some custom rolled scripts myself.

For some other options, Nagios has now been forked, so if that is "close" to what you want, you may want to contribute to Icinga.

Reconnoiter also looked pretty kewl, but they haven't released anything yet, but it looks like they are planning it to be very scalable.