Ask Slashdot: Open Sourced Mall Software

peyote was looking for some thoughts on the following issue: "I am looking for feedback regarding OSS shopping mall software. First, does any OSS software exist that provides an online mall environment for use with Linux & Apache? What are *your* experiences with that software? Second, would such a thing be of interest to the community as a whole? So I'm just researching a little behind what the community as a whole thinks about this. Would this be something that might be useful? What would be involved in coordinating an Open Source development group, should this project go GPL? I appreciate any comments you all may be able to contribute!" Sounds interesting! What do you all think?

Here's more information on the project background from peyote.
We are a non-profit organization that has developed, in-house, a set of perl scripts that implement a shopping mall. Some important bits: MySQL is the backend, it's developed to be a multi-store mall, and uses PGP and SSL w/o a problem. It also supports CyberCash, among other things. We are now looking at a number of things to be added to the software. It is at the point where it would be perfect to GPL -- we can't really afford the manpower and money to develop it to the point where we finally want it to be, and I see something of a void in the OSS community WRT mall software. The software is *very* functional and has worked very well for us!"

OS/2 users are dinosaurs

[jabbo]

Security products are only expensive if you're infringing on someone's patents and live in North America, the only place anyone respects patents on algorithms.

mod_ssl + rsaref + apache didn't cost me a damn cent and took about 3 hours to set up. I don't make $6667 per hour so I can't figure out where the $20K figure I saw being bandied about comes from.

Have fun writing those OS/2 device drivers, dickhead.

Linux just sucks less -- JWZ (paraphrase)

Shopping Cart Software

[mholve]

I know there's some free shopping cart software out there. Check out http://www.cgi-resources.com [cgi-resources.com]

What's so damn good about this Python thing anyway

[ninjaz]

This code:

for ($i = 0; $i 20; $i++) {
if ($i == 10) {
$nx = $nx + 2970 / 2;
$ny = 400;
}

can be replaced with:

foreach $i (0..20) {
...
}

that makes it look more like the python equivalent that you showed.

Yes, put it out there!

[ptomblin]

I'm designing a project right now that will be free at first, but eventually hope to have a "for pay" component. When it does, I'll want shopping cart technology. When that day comes, I'll start looking for open source software first.

Security products are expensive

[timur]

An RSA license to use SSL costs $25K. Granted, the web server takes care of that, but the SSL version of Apache isn't free.

To set up a shopping mall, you'll need to accept credit cards. Even if the source code for that feature is free, doing the secure transaction with a bank won't be. And with the RSA patents in the US, it may not be possible to write the code and distribute it.

--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, [e-mail], http://www.tabi.org

SSL _is_ the RSA patent

[timur]

I don't know for sure, but from a conversation I had with someone working in this area, SSL is an RSA patent. The algorithms you use to create an SSL transaction can only be implemented by using a patented RSA algorithm. In fact, you can consider SSL to be an implementation of the RSA patent. There's no way around it.

--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, [e-mail], http://www.tabi.org

For future Python reference, try this

[Evan]

• slashpost.py
  • '''
  • Here's a little script which formats properly-indented
  • Python code for posting on Slashdot. It is being used
  • on itself, via
  • python slashpost.py slashpost.py
  • It's a mite simple-minded, but gets the job done for
  • snippets like itself.
  • '''
  • import re, cgi, fileinput
  • inspace = re.compile('( *)')
  • instack, indent = [], -1
  • for line in fileinput.input(): if fileinput.isfirstline(): print '<STRONG>'+fileinput.filename()+'</STRONG>'

• line = cgi.escape(line[:-1]) # trim newline, escape <s and &s

• i = len(inspace.match(line).group()) # indented how far?

• if i==len(line):
• • print '</UL><UL>&nbsp;' # empty line
  • continue

• if i>indent:
• • instack.append(indent)
  • indent = i

• else:
• • print '</UL>',
  • while i<indent: print '</UL>',
  • instack, indent = instack[:-1], instack[-1]

• print

• print '<UL>', line,

• for i in instack:
• • print '</UL>',

Apologies to lynx users

[Evan]

I was led astray by the behavior of Netscape and IE; Sorry. Here's another go:

slashpost.py
'''
Here's a little script which formats indented code
for posting on Slashdot (where <PRE> doesn't work).
It is being used on itself, via:

python slashpost.py slashpost.py

Far shorter and less simple-minded than my first shot at this.
'''
import cgi, fileinput
from string import expandtabs, replace

for line in fileinput.input():
if fileinput.isfirstline():
print '<STRONG>'+fileinput.filename()+'</STRONG><BR>'
# Trim newline, convert tabs to spaces, escape &s and <s
if line[-1]=='\n':
line = line[:-1]
line = cgi.escape(expandtabs(line, 8))
# Make hard spaces and line breaks
print replace(line, '', '&nbsp;&nbsp;')+'<BR>'

Python Comments

[Evan]

There seems to be a deep, peculiar mental dividing line among programmers which is highlighted by the contrasts of Perl and Python. The two languages are actually very similar; Both are free, widely ported, easily expandable and embeddable. Both have good standard libraries, powerful dynamic built-in datatypes and OO features.

Perl has C-ish syntax, with extensive use of non-alphanumeric characters. Python has more Pascal-ish syntax, apart from the use of indentation for blocks. This is where the divide shows itself; On the one hand there are programmers (such as myself) who find Perl and C very ugly and hard to read, while Python seems totally clear and natural. On the other hand, there are programmers who find Perl to be clear and natural, and Python's indentation too weird to be endured.

No amount of advocacy is going to convince coders on either side of this line to switch. It's completely a matter of taste. If having both seems like unnecessary division or duplication of effort, remember that "there's more than one way to do it".

Taste shouldn't lead to disinformation, though. I'm rather annoyed by those people who don't merely dislike Python's syntactic indentation, but start (incorrectly) comparing it to COBOL or moaning about how fragile the whitespace is and how tabs and spaces don't mix well. For anyone who uses Python regularly, these are non-problems; We simply don't mix tabs and spaces, and don't use tools which muck up leading whitespace. The only trouble I've *ever* had was in posting code to Slashdot, and a quick script elsewhere in this thread fixed that.

A few links...

[Booker]

I've used the web_store script a little, you can get it at http://www.extropia.com/products.html

There's also a list at http://www.pro3.com/cartfree.shtml

Apache, jserv, JDK and MySQL

[slimer]

...are the tools we used when building commercial "shopping-sites" using servlets here in Sweden. It was back when I worked as a freelance consultant. I designed and implemented the system together with another fellow, and it works quite nicely. It was for internal sales, though, so there is nothing to view on the web.

However, servlets demand quite a bit of time to develop. They are fast and secure, though (since servlets eliminate the need for forking that used with perl cgis, for example). I believe an open source shopping system would be quite neat, and I'd love to contribute.

Python uses reference counting!

[SimonK]

You're a C++ programmer aren't you ? They are the only half educated people who think reference counting is good. It has terribly unreliable performance characteristics, it breaks when confronted with circular references, and its demonstrably slower than real GC.

PERL PERL PERL

[kuro5hin]

We love perl. There should be a T-Shirt, like those I [heart] NY ones: I [heart] Perl! PHP3 is gaining, though... a lot of very cool stuff you can do with that.

Rusty (haven't had enough coffee yet today)
----------------------

OpenCart

[Trixter]

A friend of mine is working on such a system called OpenCart [opencart.com]. I have no idea how far along he is, but you're free to email him [mailto] if you like.

Read the second paragraph!!

[PMoonlite]

Hello, nimrods... he's not asking for a software solution... He's asking how/whether to GPL his own company's! How about reading for once?!

As a partial response, I think that everyone would like to see a GPL'ed shopping program, however the concerns mentioned earlier about encryption may make the legal issues of releasing the source difficult...

Project "Death Spiral"

[StimpyBoy]

You think so? :)

And of course...

[mengel]

coffee mugs with the project slogan.

Security products are expensive

[jerodd]

Of course, I've seen lots of people using Apache SSLeay without paying RSA any money.

Heres a good GPL`ed shoping cart

[vpp]

i`m setting up a site not too disimalar to wat you must be planing on. i looked over a couple of carts but found this one the best:

http://www.minivend.com/iri/mvend.html


Scott (vpp)

OSS eMall software

[CodeMerc]

I've got an eMall system. I am working hard to get it to the point where I can hang it up on the Giant Java Tree [gjt.org].
I'm grinding it out in html, servlets, and JSPs. I've already hung a piece of it up on the tree:
webThingy [gjt.org].
It runs on mySQL. To see a wee bit of it look here [gims.net]. This registration servlet is not live and not visible to the world at large; it's my testbed. It will be GPL'd soon.

Dig this: the servlet engine is running last Wednesday's snapshot of Kaffe using Apache mod_jserv 0.9.12 on a Cobalt RaQ. I think it's the only RaQ in the world running java servlets.

TTFN.

Checkout Minivend

[jfrye]

You should take a look at Minivend http://www.minivend.com. The license is GPL, it is extremely feature rich and flexible. Written in Perl, it has its own tag system and allows embeded Perl. It supports CyberCash, SSL, PGP, database connectivity with SQL and DBI/DBD, and internationalization. There is extensive reference material available plus a new user documentation project is currently underway.

PHP Cart

[dfallon]

I'm writing an open source PHP cart that works with mysql and cybercash... If people are interested in being involved, or have already done this, I'd love to hear from you....

Potential Features?

[Scott_F]

i was thinking about writing one for a while, and came up with a couple things that might be cool to include if you find time to write one:

allows users to set up their own catalogs. reference a "catalog" directory in their home directory so that they can update whenever they need to. (i.e.: give each business an account and let them develop the catalog)

web interface for updating the catalog (prices, pictures, etc...)

"templates" or "themes" for product pages and indices (easy updating/creation)

database (for power) OR flat-text (for ease) data format

those are a couple things... :)

Security products don't have to be expensive

[goaliemn]

in order to communicate with the current web browsers, it has to use RSA. I tried working around it for quite awhile and gave in and bought a RSA license and started selling my server. With a server available for under $100, its hard for someone going into e-commerce to not justify the expense.

Mark
http://ssl.hockey.net