一家機器人和電子設備專業公司於本月初提出美金3000的賞金給第一位寫出Kinect開放原始碼驅動程式的人(http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/), 一個星期的時間, 已有人領賞了: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/10/we-have-a-winner-open-kinect-drivers-released-winner-will-use-3k-for-more-hacking-plus-an-additional-2k-goes-to-the-eff/.
不可思議, 在Adafruit一開始提出美金1000元賞金之後, 微軟大為光火, 提出法律的威脅:
"Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products,” a company spokesperson told CNET. “With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

Adafruit馬上加碼到美金2000元, 最後再加碼到美金3000元, Hector Martin只花三個小時就寫出了驅動程式. 領走了賞金.

我下載了原始碼, GPL授權:
$ git clone git://git.marcansoft.com/libfreenect.git
發現是用c和python寫的, 程式很簡單, 可見Kinect的設計很好.

微軟該告嗎? 只是個驅動程式, 並未駭進Kinect的軟體或硬體中, 有侵權嗎? 但是呢, 這個驅動程式將可使Linux使用Kinect. 開啟了各種應用的市場.