$2K bounty for free/open Kinect drivers (Microsoft thinks this is illegal!)

Microsoft has just released its Kinect camera, a USB device that allows you to control your computer with gestures. It incorporates a motorized pivot, an RGB camera, depth-sensor and multi-array microphone "which provides full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition capabilities."

The Adafruit Industries people are offering a $2,000 bounty to the first person to write a fully open/free set of drivers for the Kinect so that it can be used as a peripheral in other hardware projects.

The bounty started out as $1,000, but the Adafruit folks doubled it after a Microsoft spokesdrone told CNet that they would "work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

The Open Kinect project – THE OK PRIZE – get $2,000 bounty for Kinect for Xbox 360 open source drivers (now $2k)