Hacker wins contest for open-source Kinect driver

A hacker won a contest on Wednesday to be the first person to successfully create an open-source driver for Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensitive controller.

Last week, open-source hardware developers Adafruit Industries offered $1,000 to the first person or team to complete the task. After Microsoft told CNET News that it did not "condone the modification of its products", Adafruit upped the bounty to $2,000 and later $3,000. Adafruit has now announced in a blog post that a hacker named Hector used a Linux laptop to create the driver and claim the money. Kinect hacker image

"Hector has decided to invest this bounty into hacking tools and devices for a group of people he works with closely (eg. iPhone Dev Team members, Wii hacker team Team Twiizers, and a few others)," Adafruit said in its blog post. "They don't have much expendable income to buy tools and devices to hack, and sometimes this hobby can be a bit expensive. This will be a good investment that will allow them to hack more and newer devices."

For more on this story, read Hacker wins contest for open-source Kinect driver on CNET News.