It's a shame that the license is non-commercial only. I wonder if they've got a ...

TomOfTTB · on June 16, 2011

I'm not sure that's the issue.

For Microsoft to release a commercial license they have to be able to support it. That means relatively no bugs, staffing tech support, etc... I don't think Microsoft is ready to do that with Kinect.

In fact, I think this SDK is a response to the homebrew solutions that were coming out. I think Microsoft saw the focus shifting off them and onto the open source community and they didn't want to lose the good PR. Meaning this SDK was probably rushed out the door (and I'd suspect has some serious bugs in it)

random42 · on June 17, 2011

While I concur to the premise, I must disagree with the drawn conclusion.

At the risk of speculating, I'd say MS need some more time before the release the commercial license, for the reasons mentioned by you (robustness of the code, staffing tech support etc.) and also to possibly see the reception of the software by the developer community, before deciding on commercial terms (It IS labelled beta afterall).

Edit - From http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kine...

> "This SDK is designed for non-commercial purposes only; a commercial version is expected to be available at a later date."

contextfree · on June 16, 2011

There's a commercial version still under development. I think I read it would be available late this year.

andypants · on June 16, 2011

The sdk is still in beta, a commercial license will come eventually.