php pieces of what?

back in july 2010 i wrote about how i was frustrated with our point of sale system (Checkout, a Mac application which changed hands once or twice and is no longer being developed) and had taken a quick survey around to see what open source solutions there were.

the one that i mentioned there (PHP Point of Sale) is still around, but is no longer open source. here is a very early fork of it that still survives. i know at least one art supply store out there is using it (the closed-source version, not that early fork), but i haven’t really looked at it since 2010.

there are a few more php point of sale systems now.

the biggest is called Open Source Point of Sale and appears to be undergoing an upgrade from CodeIgniter 3 to CodeIgniter 4 right now. i spent a few minutes poking around the demo online, and i don’t think i would be happy using it. it is under an MIT license.

another big one is NexoPOS, which is GPL-licensed. i have not played around with the demo, but the supporting website looks pretty slick.

most of the others look like they are just experimental projects or not being actively used or developed.

something i think about a lot is whether i should be trying to take Scat POS beyond just using it ourselves. part of me feels like i am a seasoned enough developer to know that the work that would be required to give it the level of polish and durability to survive usage outside of our own doors could be substantial.