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“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis...

Nest is dropping support for one of its products on May 15. More than just dropping support, the product will cease to work entirely. The product isn’t one of Nest’s branded lines – it’s not the thermostat, the smoke alarm or the Nest Cam. Instead it's the Revolv smart home hub. Nest acquired Revolv in 2014 and stopped selling the product – which was one of the early home automation hubs – almost immediately.

We all owe [Richard Stallman] a large debt for his contributions to computing. With a career that began in MIT’s AI lab, [Stallman] was there for the creation of some of the most cutting edge technology of the time. He was there for some of the earliest Lisp machines, the birth of the Internet, and was a necessary contributor for Emacs, GCC, and was foundational in the creation of GPL, the license that made a toy OS from a Finnish CS student the most popular operating system on the planet. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without [Stallman], open source software wouldn’t exist.

Introducing 'Big Sur,' the Brains of A.I.

Mozilla is making it easy for people to try Firefox OS ahead of the system's appearance in developed countries in 2016.

Machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence that wields software to interpret and make predictions from large sets of data, is all the rage in Silicon Valley. Facebook is investing big in it; Microsoft has too, and now Apple (quietly) is also. But it was Google that started the trend, and in order to remain innovative — and compete for scarce talent — Google needs to keep looking like the cutting-edge leader.

Linux has become a know how, if you are a system administrator working in a larger environment. Security teams have been deployed by large organizations to keep an eye on vulnerabilities in their systems and take corrective or preventive action as suitable.

The US Library of Congress today issued a set of exemptions to an infamous provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), establishing a victory for consumers who like to tinker with devices without running afoul of copyright law. The exemptions were far-reaching, extending from movie and television files used in an educational context for criticism to installing third-party software — in other words jailbreaking — tablets and smart TVs.They will however only last for three years.

The long-predicted exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has now taken place in North America, with the region's authority left with no further supply of the 32-bit labels to issue.

Latest version of the browser arrives for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android devices.

"Happy Birthday," the world's best-known English-language song, is now legally yours.

Microsoft confirms the issues, says a fix is coming. The Skype service is currently down in some countries and Microsoft says that it’s already aware of the problem and a fix is on its way.

In an e-mail today to the Open Source Software Security (oss-security) mailing list, the maintainer of wireless network client code used by Android, the Linux and BSD Unix operating systems, and Windows Wi-Fi device drivers sent an urgent fix to a flaw that could allow attackers to crash devices or even potentially inject malicious software into their memory. The flaw could allow these sorts of attacks via a malicious wireless peer-to-peer network name.

If you’re creating a new technology or have a business idea beware. Patent trolls are everywhere.

Now that Google is letting any developers bring their Android apps to the Chrome Web Store, the company needs to give developers a way to test their apps. It turns out the same tool lets anyone run Android apps in Chrome… even if you’re using the Chrome web browser on Windows, OS X, or Linux rather than Chrome OS.

Google just introduced a whole new kind of Chrome OS computer—a dongle that plugs into any HDMI-equipped display. It’s called a Chromebit, and it isn’t your run-of-the-mill streaming stick. For under $100, you’re looking at a full computer that plugs right into your TV.

If you’ve a fondness for installing old versions of Windows and alternatives like Linux on your desktops and laptops, be warned:

Big patent trolls see court wins, twice in two weeks. Will it matter for reform?

An extremely critical vulnerability affecting most Linux distributions gives attackers the ability to execute malicious code on servers used to deliver e-mail, host webpages, and carry out other vital functions.

This morning, Dell has announced that their Developer Edition line of Linux-powered laptops is getting a pretty significant revamp. In addition to an upgraded XPS-13 Developer Edition based on Dell’s 2015 XPS-13 refresh, the line is adding a piece of workstation-class hardware: the Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation, Developer Edition.