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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk threw the automotive industry into a tizzy last week, when he announced that he was throwing open the company's patents. Some hailed the move as yet more proof of the abysmal state of the United States patent system; others opined that it would give the electric car indust...

Mozilla showcased the latest developments in its plan to offer inexpensive smartphones running the open source Firefox OS at the Mobile Asia Expo this week in Shanghai. They include reference designs for production in India; plans to launch the smartphones in India within the next few months; the ad...

Samsung this week officially launched its long-anticipated Tizen phone, at the Tizen Developer Conference being held in San Francisco through Wednesday. One description of Tizen is that it's an open source Linux-based operating system from Samsung -- but that might be open to debate. The Samsung Z T...

The volunteers who developed Tails, the open source operating system used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, this week released v1.0. This is the 36th stable release of the OS since the first public version, then called "Amnesia," was released in June 2009. Various security and bug fixes have been i...

The Web has been abuzz with discussion of the HeartBleed flaw. Security vendors and experts have been falling all over themselves to offer advice on detecting or mitigating the flaw; consultants have been offering businesses advice on how to deal with the problem; businesses with websites have been ...

Google announced a $100,000 developers' challenge prize on Wednesday, the second day of its Project Ara modular phone developers' conference. The top two runners-up will get all-expenses paid trips for two or three people to the next Ara devcon -- there will be a few more held this year -- and guara...

Google Glass, which has been the focus of considerable controversy, went on sale Tuesday -- for one day only -- at $1,500, with Android KitKat and new features that include improved battery life, photo bundles, photo replies and voice command sorting. However, one feature -- video calling -- has b...

A flaw in OpenSSL that has been around since 2011, the Heartbleed Bug, lets hackers steal information protected by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. Codenomics, which co-discovered the flaw at about the same time as Google's Neel Mehta, tested some of its own services and found it ...

Mozilla Foundation cofounder Brendan Eich -- whose recent appointment as CEO of subsidiary Mozilla Corp. sparked an uproar -- on Thursday stepped down from the post in a bid to keep the company viable. Foundation cofounder and CEO Mitchell Baker painted the move as a return to the foundation's core ...

Google on Wednesday released a developer preview for Android Wear, a day after announcing the project, which Android head honcho Sunder Pichai teased at SXSW earlier this month. The preview, which includes a software development kit, an Android emulator and a preview support library, is for develo...

An Android developer's disclosure that it's possible to hack into the WhatsApp database and read the text of the chats from another application could be a big headache for Facebook, which has agreed to purchase the app for $19 billion. "This is not a bug, but a design decision of WhatsApp," said Bas...

Nokia on Monday confirmed months of speculation with the unveiling of its X family of smartphones running Android. The X, X+ and XL are priced at $123, $136 and $150, respectively. Like Nokia's low-end Asha line, the X devices come in bright colors. They borrow some of Asha's other well-received fea...

The Android operating system, which Google touts as open, isn't. Google imposes strict restrictions on smartphone manufacturers and app developers in its Android mobile application distribution agreement, or MADA, according to excerpts of documents revealed by Ben Edelman, an associate professor at ...

Red Hat on Wednesday launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 into beta. RHEL 7 incorporates several changes, including a move from Oracle's MySQL to the open source MariaDB, the adoption of the XFS file system, and improvements in various areas, including storage and file size. "Together, the attributes...

The Linux Foundation on Tuesday announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance, a cross-industry consortium working on a standard of interoperability among devices connected to the Internet of Things. LG will incorporate the Alliance's technology into the smart TVs it offers next year. The alliance...

Close to a third of all websites use Linux, according to W3Techs, and Linux system users are arguably second only to Mac users in their devotion to their platform of choice, yet Linux gamers have traditionally been the red-headed stepchildren of the gaming community. Xbox 360 was the top-selling con...

The first reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch have hit the Internet and they are generally tepid. However, "I'm not sure how anyone can give it a rating of anything until it is put through its paces over time by consumers actually using it in real-life situations," said Larry Chiagouris, a...

Valve Software will beta test 300 hardware boxes running its Linux-based SteamOS, a standalone operating system for entertainment appliances in consumers' living rooms. The prototype box for the Steam platform, which is optimized for gaming in the living room, is completely upgradable and open. Beta...

Google on Tuesday rolled out a feature for its recently launched Android Device Manager that lets users lock down a stolen Android device from anywhere, via the Web. "This is something that should be built into the OS and the platform because it's an inherent security feature," said tech analyst R...

The Cyanogen free and open source Android firmware project on Wednesday announced that it had received $7 million in a Series A round of funding in April. The investment came from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. "What will change is our capabilities, our speed, and our size," wrote Cyanogen...