The Lego »Mindstorms NXT« firmware is becoming open source - and this is the only way it could happen. Lego earns money from selling the construction kits and the software is enhanced by fans. This was already the case with the RCX - only the developers had to disassemble a lot of bytes to figure out how the thing works. With the NXT, things could get significantly better.
The memory equipment (256 MB Flash) and the CPU (Arm 7) also sound very good. This will be a pretty interesting device, the new robot building block.