“Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products”

Pt 10508-2

News around the web from our Open Kinect bounty announcement...

CNET – Bounty offered for open-source Kinect driver. “But Microsoft isn’t taking kindly to the bounty offer. “Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products,” a company spokesperson told CNET.”

$2,000 Bounty Put on Open-Source Kinect Drivers. New York-based Adafruit Industries really wants to get its hands on open-source drivers for Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 peripheral, Kinect. So much so that the firm is offering a handsome bounty for the first successful release.

Slashdot, $2,000 Bounty For Open Source Xbox Kinect Drivers. The bounty was originally $1,000, but Microsoft’s dour response induced Adafruit to double it.

TechEye – Microsoft furious at $2,000 bounty for open source Kinect drivers. A $2,000 bounty is being offered to the first developer who creates an open source driver for the Kinect, despite the proposal meeting with Microsoft’s staunch disapproval.

THINQ – Open Kinect project angers Microsoft – Threatened with legal action

Escapist, Hack Kinect, Win Money – A DIY electronics outfit in New York is offering a prize to the first hacker to reverse engineer Microsoft’s Kinect.

Wired – Adafruit Offers Bounty for Open-Source Kinect Drivers. This isn’t much like finding an open driver for a printer. It’s more like jailbreaking the iPhone.

CrunchGear – Bounty Offered For Open-Source Kinect Driver. “I believe an open source driver will be created, and I’m just going to throw out a guess, around a month and a half from now.”

Kotaku – DIY hardware champions adafruit industries want somebody to come up with a set of open source drivers for Microsoft’s Kinect, so anyone can run the thing on all kinds of different computer systems. There’s a reward…

PCWorld – Kinect Launch Goes From Odd to Weird – “Microsoft got a little testy when someone put a $2000 hacker’s bounty on the device”.

Hack-a-day – Open Kinect Project Prize... They want RGB and distance values.

Gizmag – US$2,000 bounty put on open source drivers for Microsoft’s Kinect. “…judging by comments from a company spokesman to CNET there aren’t likely to be too many Microsoft employees taking up the challenge.”

FastCompany – MS is already rattling its saber mentioning “law enforcement” and “tampering.”

Geek.com – $2000 bounty offered for open source Kinect drivers – Adafruit Industries, a company that sells kits and parts for original, open source hardware projects, has put a bounty out for someone to develop open source Kinect drivers.

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4 Comments

  1. Someone needs to look at the camera in a Kanye-like fashion during the next ask-an-engineer and say, “Microsoft doesn’t care about hack people” before cutting the camera.

  2. you just made this soda go up my nose

  3. Surprised nobody has mentioned the grand irony of Microsoft’s stance, particularly given that Microsoft hired the guy most famous for hacking the wiimote, Johnny Chung Lee, to work on Natal: http://aol.it/911ZTT

    Begs the question “were it not for community hacking of console gesture-based controls, would Kinect even exist in its present form?”

  4. Computer vision on this project is very similar with the one used in kinect, with infrared lights:

    http://nuve.jmartinho.net

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