Tezos - Participate in the governance of your cryptocurrency. Read the source code of any smart-contract on the blockchain.

As I understand it, the source code of tezos itself is stored on its own blockchain. Any modifications to the source are proposed by and voted on by owners of the tezos currency (weighted by how much they own). Also, unlike Ethereum, smart contracts are stored as source code on the blockchain, rather than as compiled bytecode.

It's a competitor to ethereum - a place to create more ICOs basically from what I understand. Maybe they're running out of ideas

Token sales may end up being worth a ton of money. There's going to be competition.

Tezos - An Ethereum where the smart contract language ambiguity and procedural nature of the code doesn't result in hundreds of millions in theft.

It's Ethereum with the claim of having a better language for the contracts (enabling automatic verification).

I don't think it makes that much sense, after all, you could also create another language that compiles to Solidity, and that is verifiable.

I mean it is OK, just not as much of an improvement as they make it sound.

Or create another language that compiles to the Ethereum virtual machine. There are several already, and at least two in development designed to be better for formal verification.

Yes that is what I meant - I don't know Ethereum as well, so I assumed Solidity is the already the level of the VM (the "assembly"). Thanks for clarifying!