spent most of this afternoon looking at open-source php-based ecommerce packages: 123tkShop, dev/coin, freetrade, marketplus, oscommerce, phorsale, and phpshop.

none of them have the polish of some of the message boards i looked at, but the ones i could get to work all had good qualities. i'm beginning to zero in on using either phorsale or the 'stable' version of phpshop for my tutorial. unfortunately, phorsale lacks sales tax calculation, and since phpshop is undergoing a ground-up rewrite, and is rather more complex than phorsale, i hesitate to use it. (then again, i'm not sure that phorsale is being actively developed any longer.)