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The Mozilla Foundation on Friday said it was releasing an alpha-test version of Fennec, its mobile version of Firefox, for the Nokia N900 and smartphones running Android 2.0 or above.

Fennec’s main strengths are support for add-ons (much like desktop Firefox) and integration with Firefox on the desktop. The new browser provides “Firefox Sync built-in into the browser, which provides seamless access to Awesome Bar browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs,” according to a Mozilla blog post.

Other new technologies include Electrolysis, which separates the UI and rendering processes for faster response, and Layers, which improves scrolling, animation and video performance.

Fennec’s pace of development has been almost comically slow. The browser project was announced in April of 2008, and the first alpha version appeared on Nokia handhelds in October of 2008. A PCMag hands on from February 2009 was an embarrassing failure, as was another test conducted in September 2009.

In the meantime, the alternative browser market for Android is thriving, led by the excellent Dolphin HD and Opera Mini browsers. Dolphin HD also supports add-ons, and many are available in the Android Market.

The Fennec alpha is only available from Mozilla’s Web site, not from the Android Market, so you need to enable non-market applications in your preferences to install it. That means the browser can’t be easily installed on AT&T phones such as the Samsung Captivate, which don’t have the non-market option. You can check Mozilla’s compatibility list to see if your phone will work with the browser.

Diaspora, the open source social network and potential Facebook challenger, will be ready to launch on September 15, according to the project’s developers.

In a recent blog post, the Diaspora team say they have the nascent social networking software up and running, and are happy with the near-final result. Despite these proclamations, however, it’s unclear what Diaspora will look like or how it will function when Diaspora finally launches.

Open Source Facebook

Diaspora is meant to be an alternative to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks allowing you to share content such as photos, status updates, links, and so on. The plan for implementing Diaspora, as I understand it, is for users to download the software package, and then install it on their own Website hosted by yourself or a Web hosting service like Go Daddy.

For those not interested in hosting their own Diaspora site, the team also plans on creating a one-click sign-up version of Diaspora as well. But it’s not clear when a hosted version of Diaspora would become available. However, the real power behind Diaspora appears to be the ability to take control of all your social networking data and put it on a server that you control.

Features

At launch, Diaspora will likely be fairly basic. Key features, according to the project Website, include the ability to scrape your data from major social networks such as Faceb ook, Twitter, and Flickr; and for Diaspora users to connect with each other and share content such as status updates and photos between different Websites. Diaspora is also supposed to include end-to-end GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) encryption to make sure everything you share with your friends is protected while it’s being sent across the Internet from one site to another.

Plans for Diaspora after its initial launch include Open ID integration, Voice over Internet Protocol services, and instant messaging. The team also plans to make Diaspora extensible so that developers can write plug-ins for it, which I assume would be similar to using WordPress plug-ins.

Diaspora Origins

Diaspora was born amid the controversy surrounding Facebook’s privacy controls and sharing features such as Instant Personalization. The project was initiated by four New York University students, and was originally conceived as a summer project. After a swarm of media attention, however, and $200,00 of funding raised through Kickstarter, Diaspora appears to be taking on a life of its own. At least two members of the Diaspora team will not resume their studies in the fall to focus instead on Diaspora’s long-term ambitions.

But questions still remain about whether Diaspora would ever be able to come close to challenging Facebook and its growing base of 500 million users. Then again, perhaps the point of Diaspora is not to compete with Facebook for number of users. Instead, Diaspora is simply an open alternative for those looking for a social networking solution without the hassle of constantly managing your privacy settings.

Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul).

Open-source social network Diaspora is set to launch on Sept. 15, the service’s creators announced in Thursday blog post. But can it do battle with Facebook?

“We have been coding. We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15,” they wrote.

Site creators Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy describe Diaspora as a “distributed network, where totally separate computers connect to each other directly, will let us connect without surrendering our privacy.”

Those computers are known as “seeds,” which will be owned by the user – hosted by them directly or on a rented server.

“Once it has been set up, the seed will aggregate all of your information: your Facebook profile, tweets, anything,” they wrote in an April blog post.

At this point, the team is focusing on “clear, contextual sharing,” they said Thursday. What information is shared with everyone, and what information is only shared with close friends? “We know that’s a hard UI problem and we take it seriously,” they said.

Diaspora initially had plans for a plug-in framework that would let newly invented content integrate easily with every seed. After joining Pivotal Labs in early June, however, Diaspora prioritized and has since pushed back plans for plug-ins and APIs. “Our original goals remain the same, and these features are still in our timeline,” they said.

After the launch, Zhitomirskiy and Sofaer will take leave from New York University to develop and maintain the site as a long-term project.

“We have shifted our development timeline accordingly, and the first release will be the beginning of something great, not a finished summer project,” they said.

Max Wanted to Tell You a Bit More… from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

The managing board of enterprise open-source software company Red Hat has elected a retired U.S. Army officer, General Henry Hugh Shelton, to serve as chairman, the company announced Monday. Shelton takes the place of Matthew Szulik, who was the former CEO of Red Hat.

“General Shelton possesses the right combination of leadership, experience and industry knowledge to help guide Red Hat toward achieving its future goals,” said Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, in a statement.

Shelton has had a long and notable career in the Army, spanning four decades of service. From 1997 until 2001, he served two terms as the chairman of the Defense Department’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the highest-ranking U.S. military position, one that advises the U.S. president. During Vietnam war, Shelton served two tours in that country, the first with the 5th Special Forces Group and the second with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He has received numerous military awards, as well as the Congressional Gold Medal.

Shelton has been a member of the Red Hat board since 2003, having served as director as well as on the audit and compensation committees. Szulik stepped down from the board on Aug. 12, at the annual shareholders meeting. He announced his departure in May.

In addition to providing guidance for Red Hat, Shelton also serves on the board of directors for beer maker Anheuser-Busch. He has also served on the boards for military IT integrators CACI International and Anteon.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab’s e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Oracle’s suit against Google for the use of Java in its Android portable operating system continues to reverberate through the open-source movement. In the newest development, Google has declined to participate in the upcoming JavaOne conference, an event formerly hosted by Java creator Sun Microsystems and now run by Sun’s new owner, Oracle.

Joshua Bloch of Google’s Open Source Programs Office, in a posting Friday on the company’s open-source blog, wrote that Google wished it could attend, “but Oracle’s recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally.” Bloch noted that the company had attended every JavaOne event since 2004.

Talks Between Google and Sun

Some observers are raising the possibility that, if the suit continues, Java may split into different versions, most notably a Google-branded version designed to avoid legal obstacles.

Others have warned that the battle could have unforeseen consequences for open-source software, which has found a home in many corporations. According to some estimates, as much as 75 percent of open-source software usage is inside corporations.

Oracle is viewed as trying to get as much leverage and revenue as possible from its Sun acquisition earlier this year.

In 2006, Sun made Java open source, hoping to increase its usage on the web and in data centers. When Google started developing its software platform for mobile devices, it founded the Open Handset Alliance and created Android on a Java path that it says diverged from Sun’s.

Google and Sun held talks over the last three years about remaining legal issues, but no agreement was reached. Reportedly, Sun chose not to sue Google over Java because Sun’s then-CEO Jonathan Schwartz was championing open source, including the use of an open-source version of the company’s Solaris operating system for data centers. Schwartz left after Oracle bought the company.

Google ‘Aware of Sun’s Patent Portfolio’

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, contends that “Google’s Android competes with Oracle America’s Java as an operating system software platform for cellular telephones and other mobile devices.”

The lawsuit also said the search giant “has been aware of Sun’s patent portfolio,” and noted that it hired “certain former Sun Java engineers.”

Java is used in Google’s software development kit (SDK), and the Java-built applications are compiled to run in Google’s custom virtual machine, Dalvik, using the search giant’s custom versions of the compiler and runtime. Java has been attractive to developers in part because Java apps can be written once, and then can run on any platform that has the Java virtual-machine software.

Another development kit, the Android Native Development Kit, enables third-party developers to build apps in C and C++, although Java has remained the primary development language. The complaint said Android, the Android SDK, and Dalvik violate the seven Oracle patents cited in the lawsuit.