Some people... (Score 2, Insightful)

I can give one solid-gold, straightforward, real-life reason for wanting to hack a digital camera.

My Sony DSC 717 takes infrared photos. You can hear the "clunk" as it moves the IR hot mirror out of the way for "Night Shot" mode. It would be perfect for a low-cost scientific aerial mapping application (e.g., http://www.soils.wisc.edu/~wayne/aerial_photos/aer ials_2003_06_14/), replacing custom-built cameras worth thousands of dollars.

But, because somebody once took naughty pictures with a Sony Handicam (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-214389.html?legacy= cnet, Sony crippled the IR function. Now it only works at wide apertures and slow shutter speeds, leaving aerial IR pictures hopelessly overexposed (yes, I tried ND filters) and blurry (I can only slow to about 70 MPH or the nose rises, as do the passengers' gorges). A simple "don't do that" hack to the firmware would suffice. You *know* that the cripplage is only a couple of lines of code:

if (nightShot) {
honkExposure();
}

But, when asked formally and with the full references to the scientific research we were doing (the lead prof, BTW, is internationally renowned in the field, we ain't just grubby grad students looking to save a buck and peek at Auntie Bowdler's bra), Sony blew us off.

Open source firmware? You bet we'd go for it.