osCommerce

OsCommerce is an open source online shop system. It can be downloaded free from the internet and is licensed with the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).

Development

The shop system was initially developed in March 2000 as a study under the name The Exchange Project from living in Germany programmer Harald Ponce de Leon. In December 2001, it was renamed in osCommerce. It is still officially under development, but it is used worldwide in a large number of online shops for years.

OsCommerce is since late March 2011, available in version 3.0. The most widespread is the version 2.2 -MS2.

As before, Harald Ponce de Leon lead developer and project manager of osCommerce. He now has a small group of volunteers who have taken over the development of individual parts of the shop solution and jointly managing the ever-growing project to keep up with him, together with the international community.

Dissemination

In the English-speaking online forum of the osCommerce project, over 120,000 individual users were registered in December 2006. In early 2009 there are over 200,000 registered users.

The distribution can be Free Software hardly measure, because unlike commercial systems lack the license as proof of purchase.

Properties

An essential feature of osCommerce is largely free configuration possibilities in design and features, and the ability to implement one or more of over 3000 modules ( add-ons ) in an osCommerce store.

The shop system is written in the server-side open source scripting language PHP, MySQL as a database system is used. This makes it possible to shop owners to have the changes and adjustments in sufficient knowledge.

The administration and configuration of osCommerce stores is web-based.

Commercial offshoots and variants

A part of the concept of osCommerce is to make the online shopping system a basis for further developments. Thus, a number of developers with the programming of individual components, but also of compiling a complete own offshoots and variants of the basic shops deals. This offshoot (English forks ) are sold partly professionally and under a new name, so that the origin of the system can be seen only for specialists. As long as certain proprietary notices and the GNU GPL are preserved, this corresponds entirely to the licensing model of osCommerce.

The offshoots the basic functions of the osCommerce system are essentially retained but modified in certain areas, expanded or simplified. The connection to external functions such as ERP systems, micropayment providers or consignors is sometimes covered. This can be through the integration of existing modules from others or by complete self-development, as well as every conceivable combination be realized from it.

Criticism

On 15 August 2011, the Federal Office for Information Security issued a warning against mass- compromised online stores based on an outdated version of osCommerce in Information Technology.