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RoccamOccam sends news that the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that Michael Mann, a climate scientist notable for his work on the "hockey stick" graph, does not have to turn over the entirety of his papers and emails under Freedom of Information laws. Roughly 1,000 documents were turned over in response to the request, but another 12,000 remain, which lawyers for the University of Virginia say are "of a proprietary nature," and thus entitled to an exemption. The VA Supreme Court ruled (PDF), "the higher education research exemption's desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters," and said the application of "proprietary" was correct in this case. Mann said he hopes the ruling "can serve as a precedent in other states confronting this same assault on public universities and their faculty."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The company looks to John Lilly to grow its business while ex-CEO Mitchell Baker focuses on Mozilla's vision.

Two of pre-Novell SUSE's top executives are taking the open-source groupware company Open-Xchange.

The Linux creator said copyright owners would have to agree to licensing changes, and those who didn't would have to rewrite code.

OpenVZ, the open-source community arm of SWsoft, will soon be releasing ready-to-run Ubuntu server and desktop virtual machines.

Opinion: Could Novell open-source Unix? What will OpenServer customers do? Can Sun claim some customers for OpenSolaris?

Enterprise customers want open-source solutions to continue to work together over update cycles.

Opinion: Yes, it's great news that Microsoft will be releasing a new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, but before calling in your credit card number, you should check out a free, open-source alternative: NeoOffice.

The new version of gOS, the desktop Linux, which combines Ubuntu with dedicated links to Google applications, will be unveiled at CES.

Your Linux and Mac clients won't be left out in the cold when Microsoft upgrades its Windows Server 2008 software later this year.

One of the most popular of the community Linuxes saw out the old year with a new security release.

itwbennett writes: "When you think about tech products these days, you probably think 'refresh cycle' more than 'built to last.' But there are plenty of tech products that put up with hard, daily use year after year. Here's a few to get you started: Logitech MX510 mouse, Brother black & white laser printer, Casio G-Shock watch, Alvin Draf-Tec Retrac mechanical pencil, Sony Dream Machine alarm clock. What's your longest-lasting, hardest-working device?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ZDNet: Google has launched a Chrome Remote Desktop for mobile, which means Android device owners can now control their desktop machines from afar.

CowboyRobot sends in an article about how Samsung's constantly shifting plans for its smartwatches are making it hard for developers to commit to building apps. Quoting: "Samsung's first smartwatch, released in October last year, ran a modified version of Google's Android platform. The device had access to about 80 apps at launch, all of which were managed by a central smartphone app. Samsung offered developers an SDK for the Galaxy Gear so they could create more apps. Developers obliged. Then Samsung changed direction. Samsung announced a new series of smartwatches in February: the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Gear Fit. Unlike the first device, these three run Samsung’s Tizen platform. ... This week, Samsung made things even more interesting. Speaking to Reuters, Yoon Han-kil, senior vice president of Samsung’s product strategy team, said the company is working on a watch that will use Google’s Android Wear platform. In other words, Samsung will bring three different watches to market with three different operating systems in under a year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CowboyRobot sends in an article about how Samsung's constantly shifting plans for its smartwatches are making it hard for developers to commit to building apps. Quoting: "Samsung's first smartwatch, released in October last year, ran a modified version of Google's Android platform. The device had access to about 80 apps at launch, all of which were managed by a central smartphone app. Samsung offered developers an SDK for the Galaxy Gear so they could create more apps. Developers obliged. Then Samsung changed direction. Samsung announced a new series of smartwatches in February: the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Gear Fit. Unlike the first device, these three run Samsung’s Tizen platform. ... This week, Samsung made things even more interesting. Speaking to Reuters, Yoon Han-kil, senior vice president of Samsung’s product strategy team, said the company is working on a watch that will use Google’s Android Wear platform. In other words, Samsung will bring three different watches to market with three different operating systems in under a year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ProgrammableWeb: Telerik is obviously trying to increase the base of developers familiar with the company's application development platform.

jfruh writes: "Over the past few years, the growth rate in Detroit tech jobs has been twice the natural average. The reason is the industry that still makes Detroit a company town: U.S. automotive companies are getting into high tech in a big way, and need qualified people to help them do it. Another bonus: the rent is a lot cheaper than it is in San Francisco. '[A]ccording to Automation Alley's 2013 Technology Industry Report, the metro Detroit area grew to a total of 242,520 technology industry jobs in 2011, representing a 15% increase from the 2010 level of 210,984 technology industry jobs. No other benchmarked region had greater technology industry growth than metro Detroit in this period. Further, according to the report, this growth helped propel metro Detroit to a ranking of fourth among the 14 benchmarked regions, passing San Jose."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Silicon Angle: The most important aspect for the continued growth and success of the open source will be the attraction of developers to the community.

Bennett Haselton writes: "I was an early advocate of companies offering cash prizes to researchers who found security holes in their products, so that the vulnerabilities can be fixed before the bad guys exploited them. I still believe that prize programs can make a product safer under certain conditions. But I had naively overlooked that under an alternate set of assumptions, you might find that not only do cash prizes not make the product any safer, but that nothing makes the product any safer — you might as well not bother fixing certain security holes at all, whether they were found through a prize program or not." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenSource.com: A great first step is to help organize a series of lightning talks, which are in some ways short TED talks.