Open Source E-commerce Engine Announced

Paul Carlstrom wrote to let us know that Idealab! has unveiled its first Linux venture: an open source e-commerce engine, called OpenSales. Runs on Linux, Solaris, UNIX and WinNT, and VA Linux Systems will be bundling it with some servers later this year. This will be interesting to see how they and Magic-SW, the makers of a Linux e-commerce engine will make out - and creds to Magic for donating 10k to save penguins. They have also vowed to not use live penguins anymore in promotion of their products.

Comments

There's Yams too

[Corbet]

Another open source ecommerce system that was just recently announced is Yams - Yet Another Merchant System. Looks pretty cool. Info at their web page.

(This from tomorrow's LWN)

This is great news!!!

[weyus]

As a newly born independent conslutant (er, consultant), I am working on an e-commerce system for my client. I am _very_ interested in helping develop a serious, high - end open source e-commerce system.

By e-commerce system, I don't mean "shopping cart" w/a pretty front end either. I mean something full of real commerce functionality, like:
* interfaces for fulfillment processing
* interfaces for inventory data sharing with other applications (probably legacy, in many cases)
* interfaces for tracking shipping info.
* either the ability to integrate with a good dynamic content system or have a good dynamic content system embedded in it
* ability to dynamically modify product attributes and generate groupings of products on the fly
* interfaces for credit card authorization and sales tax calculations
* interfaces for customer service stuff

I have subscribed to the MiniVend users list, but haven't had a chance to read any of it.

I'm working with a Java servlet based commercial product which does quite a bit of stuff (all the stuff I listed above, but more - well, eventually, after they finish writing it!) and I would love to help bring an open source equivalent to the forefront.

Anyone have any thoughts on which of the existing open source e-commerce solutions is robust enough to handle a major enterprise's e-commerce needs?

I went to the e-commerce BOF at the Open Source conference but it sucked so badly, I didn't hear about any of the existing OS e-commerce applications. If I think I'm reading the market right, there is some crazy good potential for an open source solution here.

If anyone wants to discuss high end e-commerce solutions from the open source point of view, please feel free to get in touch with me. My goal is to be able to work on e-commerce applications which are primarily, if not solely, based on open source technologies.

Wes Gamble
Bison Consulting
Houston, TX
weyus@att.net

Minivend

[Brian Knotts]

Minivend does pretty much all the stuff you're talking about. The only really rough part right now is the user back end (minimate or webmin module). Both of the available back ends currently have some problems. Otherwise, I find that minivend works quite well as a small- to mid-level e-commerce solution. It can handle inventory, quantity pricing, sales tax, shipping costs, etc. More information (and a mailing list archive) is available at http://www.minivend.com.

Minivend is licensed under the GPL.

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

Re:sometimes open source just means unsellable

[Brian Knotts]

Nowadays, the hot technologies in three-tier high end sites are EJB+JSP app servers and/or the ASP+COM combo. In (mostly two-tier) smaller projects, the cresting environments are PHP and Cold Fusion.

OK...the EJP/JSP stuff I can see, but ASP/COM for high-end stuff? I just can't imagine it, seeing what I've seen about the stability of ASP/IIS/NT. I know of a company that just set up a *brand new* NT/SQL Server machine, which will act as a DB server to their NT/IIS server. You can already blue screen the thing, just by running packages in the Enterprise Manager. :-)

I suppose if you want to run a ring of web servers...but you're still going to run into weirdness, I'd bet. Man, that's like intentionally running your head full speed into a brick wall.

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page