Microsoft has made its Kinect for Windows code available on an open source licence, making it easy to reuse while also inviting public interaction and feedback on samples.
The company announced today 22 code samples have been made available on the CodePlex website, including unique samples in C#, C + + and Visual Basic.
The announcement was made via a blog post, which also revealed a newly launched Microsoft developer blog, with the company announcing that the old blog will now be used for announcements and product news while the developer blog will be home to more in-depth technical information.
Kinect is Microsoft’s motion-detecting device, which is used for playing games on the XBox 360 console, and allows users to direct play in games through body movement rather than by a hand-held controller.
Explaining the decision to release the code – which has thus far been available in samples via the Developer Toolkit – Microsoft noted the company hopes to make access to and use of the code easier for developers.
“We will continue to release our sample applications as part of our Developer Toolkit. However, that’s a large download & install that can be cumbersome if you just want to quickly view or access code on the web,” the company said.
“We’re releasing all the samples under an Apache 2.0 license so that you can take the code and reuse, remix, etc. Also, we’re using a Git repository so it’s easy clone & fork if you want.”
Microsoft hopes developers using the code will enter into discussion and provide feedback to the company in order to improve what can be done with it.
