Greetings,

Open Systems in Technology are not limited to computer systems. Public money spent on public surveillance is just like any other public expenditure, subject to the inspection of those that purchased it.

If a mother want to know that her son is at the playground he said he was going to, why can't she tune in to the camera over the web and see it?

Several years ago the Barre Open Systems Institute (bosivt.org) here in Vermont presented this paper (http://docbox.flint.com/~flint/barre/Barre_Public_Video_Policy_Draft_v01.pdf) to the Barre city fathers. This policy draft may help shape policy in Chicago, and is released under GPL V1.

Regards,

Flint
BOSIVt.org

The "Open letter to Ubuntu Community" desperately needs massive editing for
several reasons.

1. It is bravely written in English by a non English speaker, but needs syntax mediation.
2. The writer clearly has a story to tell but that story does not come out in the text.
3. The massive "dead quote" from freenode needs to be cut into segments
      that have paragraphs to detail the context of the quote.

This area of the Ubuntu community is an important issue. I think that what the author means is that the Ubuntu community needs to be about the code, and that one criteria must remain the only element of status within this community. I believe that there is a great danger of the Ubuntu community falling into the "cult of personality" problem, which is so poignantly a human failing. Mark Shuttleworth, is the SABDFL of Ubuntu and the owner of Cannonical. He is a very charismatic fellow, but I do not wish on him any
other burden than those posed by his IDE.

My best opinion is that this community write code, and teach folks to write code in the way of Ubuntu.

Regards,

Flint