Long release cycles are by no means unusual in the Open Source world. While some projects — Ubuntu, for example, and GNOME — have release cycles one can set their watch by, other projects take a less tightly scheduled approach — Debian's "we'll release when it's ready to release" philosophy comes to mind. Such would seem to be the case with the iFolder project, which released Version 3.7.2 on Friday — their first since 2007.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" said Dickens, and he could well have been talking about Silicon Valley in 2009 — while some firms are setting up venture capital funds, others are looking for a buoy just to stay afloat. Such is the case for Silicon Graphics, as the once power-player revealed last week it will be sold to Rackable Systems for just half the cost of some of its systems.

Reports surfaced late this evening that computing giant IBM — which has been in talks for some time to buy Sun Microsystems — has pulled its $7 billion offer to buy the struggling company.

To hear some media outlets talk on Tuesday, one would have thought that the Apocalypse was closing on the world like Jaws on an innocent swimmer. Havoc, mayhem, hemorrhoids, male pattern baldness — just about everything imaginable was supposed to break loose yesterday as the Conficker worm came crawling out of its hole. Why, then, is Preparation H stock up a mere quarter-point and we all still have our hair?

If you thought everybody's favorite search giant was getting close to running out of new projects to launch, think again. While Google Labs could be called the project to launch new projects, Google's latest addition to the Don't Be Evil Empire is the project to buy them all.

As many LinuxJournal.com readers will know, a number of the Linux Journal crew hail from Houston. Thus we were particularly pleased to learn that the Houston Zoo has just installed Firefox — but not quite how you think.

Memory leaks and code exploits are a fact of life for both browser developers and their users — regardless of the specific browser in question. For the developers at Mozilla, both issues have been on their minds this week, as browser bugs of both sorts have been all over the news.

A project that has no goals — no bugs to fix, no features to implement — has only stagnation to look forward to. The best prevention for this kind of stagnation is an active community of users who are quick to share what they want with the developers — even if there is the occasional users vs. devs feature stalemate. The KDE Project has no shortage of community-contributed ideas, and to keep the concepts flowing freely, the powers-that-be have implemented a new feature of their own: A designated section of the KDE Community Forums christened The "Brainstorm" Forum.

In the seemingly never-ending browser wars, monthly usage statistics are an important metric of just what is really going on on the "battlefield." For Open Source advocates, these statistics are equally if not more important, as they give a reasonably reliable overview of Open Source adoption. That may explain some of the excitement surrounding February's browser statistics, which seem to show Firefox topping the list.

The devices we use to access the internet are growing smaller and smaller, with more and more users turning to mobile devices to get their web fix on the fly. Nearly everyone in the browser market is scrambling to get their own mobile offering up to snuff, and Open Source heavyweight Mozilla is no exception.

One would be hard pressed to find a Linux user who hasn't at one point or another become acquainted with Tux, the fine-flippered fellow who serves as mascot for all things Linux. Everybody needs a break now and again, though, and so Tux has gone on sabbatical — reportedly to work as a barber — leaving the face of a very worthy cause to hold down the fort.

Having strong passwords that are frequently changed is the first line of defense against being on the receiving end of a compromised user account. This is the lesson being learned by a number of Comcast customers this week, as the appearance of a mass login list prompts the company to begin freezing accounts.

Anyone who was lucky enough to grab a GrandCentral account during one of the short spans when they were available to grab can testify that it is an interesting service, to say the least. As interesting as it may be, though, it has been plagued with technical and customer service issues that had some declaring that Google had left the platform for dead. A reasonable assumption — until this morning, that is.

Our experience with France's Gendarmerie may be limited to Pepé Le Pew cartoons, but that won't stop us from applauding their efforts at locking up proprietary software. That might just be because the fabled maréchaussée is trimming its IT spending by 70% this year — without losing so much as a byte — thanks to the wonders of Open Source software.

We've all experienced it at one time or another: the dreaded platform war. Whether it's fighting with Windows users, Mac devotees, or just those who favor another distro, every one of us has been put in the position of defending the honor of our chosen OS — and we might, just might, have launched a few battles ourselves. One software company, however, wants to bring that to an end, and is launching — of all things — a line of t-shirts aimed at encouraging computer lovers to beat their swords into digital plowshares.

There's plenty of money to be made in Open Source software — something that, despite recent events, Novell, Red Hat, and a laundry-list of other OSS-loving firms can attest to. Where there often isn't much money, however, is in the hands of individual developers who donate their time to hack Open Source apps into enterprise-class offerings. That may be changing, however — at least in New York — where a pair of state assemblymen are sponsoring a bill to provide tax breaks for Open Source developers.

Yes, it's that time again: time for the root of all Debian-based distributions — that'd be Debian, of course — to pick a fresh face from its ranks to take on the mantle of the powers-that-be.

Last week, Breaking News brought LinuxJournal.com readers the sad and sordid news of Flash-memory manufacturer Spansion's decision to drop 35% of their workforce, while simultaneously rescinding a 10% pay cut on top executives, and granting the company's new CEO a massive pay package including non-refundable advances. Apparently, however, cutting more than a third of the workforce wasn't enough to cover the costs of retaining top executives, forcing the company to file for protection under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.

Following up on Friday's look at the Linux Foundation's plans for the 2009 Collaboration Summit, Breaking News has now learned that one of the events taking place during the third-annual summit will be the kick start of a new Linux Foundation program aimed at training developers to meet the continuing need for Linux-capable talent.

The Linux Foundation — the not-for-profit that keeps Linus in keyboards, and most recently, has been looking to glam things up a bit — earlier this month provided a first glimpse into its plans for the 2009 Collaboration Summit, to be held April 8-10 in San Francisco.