World's first open-source Point Of Sale system tested at People's Food Co-op
"This past weekend People's Food Co-op in Portland, Cascadia made history. During a conference with tech and IT folk from co-ops around the united states these uber-geeks assembled and successfully rang out items on the world's first entirely free, open-source point-of-sale system. A point-of-sale system (or POS) is the software needed to run a cash register and manage the pricing of all the items in a store.
"It all started several years ago when Tak Tang, the Technology Coordinator at The Wedge Co-op in Minneapolis, MN got frustrated at his stores POS system because of his inability to get the information out of it that would really be useful to the store. Like most proprietary software POS systems have a locked core that prevents anyone from copying the source code and also prevents anyone from getting inside to mine data that the software wasn't designed to spit out. Not being able to get inside of the software means expensive service calls to vendors when something goes wrong. It also means having to wait to purchase the next version for new features and bug fixes.
"Well all of this was really cheesing Mr. Tang off so he decided to go ahead and write his own POS system. And he DID! IS4C (Information Systems 4 Co-ops) was born."
Indymedia
"It all started several years ago when Tak Tang, the Technology Coordinator at The Wedge Co-op in Minneapolis, MN got frustrated at his stores POS system because of his inability to get the information out of it that would really be useful to the store. Like most proprietary software POS systems have a locked core that prevents anyone from copying the source code and also prevents anyone from getting inside to mine data that the software wasn't designed to spit out. Not being able to get inside of the software means expensive service calls to vendors when something goes wrong. It also means having to wait to purchase the next version for new features and bug fixes.
"Well all of this was really cheesing Mr. Tang off so he decided to go ahead and write his own POS system. And he DID! IS4C (Information Systems 4 Co-ops) was born."
Indymedia
Pip Wilson posted item above at 6:07 PM | Permalink
5 Comments:
When did the Open Source POS launch? Here in my country I already implemented an Open Source POS 3 years ago running on linux and perl.
Hi. Who are the companies doing an opensource POS? I know only of TinaPOS, which was just bought by Openbravo. I think there is L'ane, PHP Point of sale, and LemonPOS as well? Any others? It seems like a logical step for open sources to take over this space as well.
I remember the days before POS systems, when all pricing was done by hand (or sticker guns; no barcodes) and credit cards were accepted by swiping through those big metal machines with a plate with your account info on it and carbon slips. Oh, how far we have come! God Bless the geeks! (Or, Uber-geeks as the cae may be!)
i want to implement a Open Sourse POS and PMS in our college - we are a hospitality management college .. can any body help me .... my email - mejayant@gmail.com ; mejayant@rediffmail.com
I appreciate your post, thanks for sharing the post, i would like to hear more about this in future
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