Microsoft plans to make a
Kinect SDK available to hobbyists and academics.
This is a very awesome thing that Microsoft is doing. They saw that people were interested in hacking the Kinect to make cool things, and they used that community enthusiasm to help promote their product. This is the exact opposite of what Sony has been doing with the PS3.
I really think Microsoft took an enlightened approach here. I hope in the future they open more of their stuff up even more than this. Hey, I can dream of an open source Windows 8, can't I?