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One of the important strengths of osCommerce is
that it is an open source shopping cart or
ecommerce solution. This has a number of important
implications.
Firstly, open source software is free in
terms of cost. Open source software is freely
distributed by the authors to whoever wishes a copy of
the product. osCommerce can be downloaded for free by
anyone from the
osCommerce website. There will be costs related to
installation, support and customization, but the
software itself is free.
The second major benefit of open source software is
that the software code can be modified, that is
anyone technically capable can examine the software
code and improve, or modify it as they see fit.
According to the
Open Source Initiative, when people have access to
programs like this it leads to a situation where,
people improve it, people adapt it, people fix
bugs [problems]. And this can happen at a speed
that, if one is used to the slow pace of
conventional software development, seems
astonishing.
For osCommerce this leads to two great
advantages.
There is a huge community of people devoted to
improving and developing osCommerce, and anyone
with the technical ability is welcome to provide
improvements and expand osCommerce. This community has
seen the resolution of hundreds of bugs, and the
implementation of many exciting and useful
enhancements.
The open nature of osCommerce’s source code also
allows for a great deal of customization, and
also makes modular development more successful, both
of these strengths will be expanded upon on other
pages.
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