I already commented in another thread but thought I should respond directly to you incase you missed it. If you are interested in an open source POS system I really think that joining POSper would be one of the better options available. If you're interested feel free to post something to the forum or to send me an email through sourceforge or by using my address which is plastered all over the codebase.
I'd definitely recommend the poster check us out (not that I'm biased or anything...). We have some pretty active development and a surprisingly strong community which are really the most two important ingredients for a project. As many others have said starting your own solution from scratch is not really a viable plan, it took a long time and a lot of coding to get POSper to the place it is now, your best bet really is to find an existing open source project and join that. I did some research before joining POSper and the only other open source POS system I found that wasn't dead was Librepos, the project that POSper forked. Librepos is a great project which has been used by a lot of businesses in production for a while, however for the reasons that we forked I think we're the better bet;)
As to the people saying it's a bad business proposition I'd like to add that I believe that POS systems are unusually well suited to an open source business model. POS systems need to be highly customized to their situation, as well the end users often have poor technical skills (note this doesn't apply to the POSper community who has the technical skills to find our site, effectively test betas, and occasionally write patches!), as a result a small business with a local presence has a big advantage, which is why most systems are written by small businesses. The need for a local presence and personal contact has really prevented any one product from getting the users, or funding, to dominate the market.
Open source has a big advantage here, essentially the template is local companies providing support to local users, these companies don't necessarily contain any devs (though funding developers is useful for priority bugs fixes and new/custom features). The local companies have way less cost than proprietary competitors because they're only funding a subset of the development, and the developers are supported by a variety of local businesses along with whatever local customers they have. POSper is still approaching its first stable release so we haven't realized this situation on a large scale yet but I've personally been involved in the scenario I've just described so it's certainly doable.
p.s. Just thought I should note that I do have another/. account with a decent UID, I just figured I should have one under my real name for this:)
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I already commented in another thread but thought I should respond directly to you incase you missed it. If you are interested in an open source POS system I really think that joining POSper would be one of the better options available. If you're interested feel free to post something to the forum or to send me an email through sourceforge or by using my address which is plastered all over the codebase.
Another POSper dev here :)
;)
/. account with a decent UID, I just figured I should have one under my real name for this :)
I'd definitely recommend the poster check us out (not that I'm biased or anything...). We have some pretty active development and a surprisingly strong community which are really the most two important ingredients for a project. As many others have said starting your own solution from scratch is not really a viable plan, it took a long time and a lot of coding to get POSper to the place it is now, your best bet really is to find an existing open source project and join that. I did some research before joining POSper and the only other open source POS system I found that wasn't dead was Librepos, the project that POSper forked. Librepos is a great project which has been used by a lot of businesses in production for a while, however for the reasons that we forked I think we're the better bet
As to the people saying it's a bad business proposition I'd like to add that I believe that POS systems are unusually well suited to an open source business model. POS systems need to be highly customized to their situation, as well the end users often have poor technical skills (note this doesn't apply to the POSper community who has the technical skills to find our site, effectively test betas, and occasionally write patches!), as a result a small business with a local presence has a big advantage, which is why most systems are written by small businesses. The need for a local presence and personal contact has really prevented any one product from getting the users, or funding, to dominate the market.
Open source has a big advantage here, essentially the template is local companies providing support to local users, these companies don't necessarily contain any devs (though funding developers is useful for priority bugs fixes and new/custom features). The local companies have way less cost than proprietary competitors because they're only funding a subset of the development, and the developers are supported by a variety of local businesses along with whatever local customers they have. POSper is still approaching its first stable release so we haven't realized this situation on a large scale yet but I've personally been involved in the scenario I've just described so it's certainly doable.
p.s. Just thought I should note that I do have another