Adafruit industries have offered a bounty on an opensource driver for the kintect hardware which includes a load of cameras and depth sensors that the software on the xbox 360 uses to work out where people are and what they a flailing at. This has some applications in all sorts of fields so a driver for that hardware (which is 130 dollar/pounds) would be handy.
Initially they offered 1k for it but then microsoft got all snippy about illegal modification (which this isn't they just want to work out how to access the data the device streams out) so they upped the reward to 2k.
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Looks like some people are already on the way to it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkODbZwGinQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18vSblw5SNk
sounds about right - there was talk of building the 360 originally with a case design cracks the processor chip if you try to open it up. Its always going to be MSs problem as a retailer of hardware peripherals, hardware, software, and OSs - their marketing team does the figures on people using them all in conjunction and whenever they aren't, it is seen as a $ loss.
Don't imagine it'll take long mind - would be mightily useful, and at a very reasonable cost assuming the software remains GNUd up to the hilt. Microsoft would see sales skyrocket... :)