SQLite Consortium Launches With Mozilla And Symbian As Charter Members

The SQLite Consortium, a new membership association dedicated to maintaining SQLite as a fully open and independent product, was formally announced today. Mozilla and Symbian Ltd. have joined the SQLite Consortium as charter members.

SQLite is a compact, high efficiency, high reliability, embeddable SQL database engine. The source code to SQLite is in the public domain and is available with no associated fees. SQLite is the most deployed SQL database engine in the world and is currently used in a wide range of commercial software products and electronic devices from leading manufacturers. SQLite is found today in many mobile phones, MP3 players, set-top boxes, and PCs.

The mission of the SQLite Consortium is to continue developing and enhancing SQLite as a product that anyone may use without paying royalties or licensing fees. Members of the SQLite Consortium provide funding to enable this mission and in return receive enterprise-level technical support. Technical control and direction of SQLite remains entirely with the SQLite developers.

Mozilla, developer of the popular open-source Firefox web browser, and Symbian, the market-leading open operating system for smartphones, both deploy the SQLite database engine in their products. As charter members of the Consortium, Mozilla and Symbian are ensuring the development and support of SQLite as a freely accessible and public domain software asset.

“SQLite has become a popular embedded database because it is lightweight, fast, and open source,” said Michael Schroepfer, Vice President of Engineering, Mozilla. “As a charter member of the SQLite Consortium, Mozilla is excited to help ensure SQLite remains a vibrant and open technology, in line with our mission to promote choice and innovation on the Internet.”

“The SQLite Consortium will help set the standards for database management which are essential in smartphone functionality and will also help create a pool of developers, highly-skilled in SQLite for future mobile phone development,” said Bruce Carney, Director, Developer Programmes & Services, Symbian. "Our involvement with the SQL Consortium demonstrates Symbian's commitment to open standards in the industry and as mobile phones become increasingly powerful and smartphones become increasingly popular, we are focused on ensuring that desktop developers, who move to the mobile space, have the easiest and most productive experience possible."

SQLite is a winner of the 2005 Google/ O'Reilly Open Source Award. Additional information regarding the SQLite Consortium is available at the SQLite website, www.sqlite.org.


About SQLite
SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, embeddable, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine. The code for SQLite is in the public domain and is free for any use, commercial or private. SQLite is currently found in countless software titles and electronic devices.

SQLite was originally developed and released 2000 by Dr. D. Richard Hipp. The code continues to be maintained and enhanced by an international team of developers under Hipp's direction.

About Mozilla
Mozilla is a global community dedicated to building free, open source products and technologies that improve the online experience for people everywhere. Mozilla works in the open with a highly disciplined, transparent and cooperative development process, under the umbrella of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. As a wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation organizes the development and marketing of Mozilla products. This unique structure has enabled Mozilla to financially support and cultivate competitive, viable community innovation. For more information, visit www.mozilla.com.

About Symbian Limited
Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones known as smartphones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading handset manufacturers and has built close co-operative business relationships with leading companies across the mobile industry. During Q3 2007, 20.4 million Symbian smartphones were sold worldwide to over 250 major network operators, bringing the total number of Symbian smartphones shipped up to 30 September 2007 to 165 million.

Symbian has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom, with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Asia (India, P.R. China, and Korea) and Japan. For more information, please visit www.symbian.com.