RE: Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design

This message was sent from: Development
http://forums.oscommerce.com/viewtopic.php?p=173345#173345
----------------------------------------------------------------

[quote]So why the amazement if someone should dedicate their business to providing support to OScommerce.

[/quote]

There's probably hundreds of folks here that consult, build web pages for those who haven't the inclination, customize osc, etc etc.   As far as I know GPL fully allows that, and there's nothing wrong with it, especially if its a service the customer pays for rather than paying for the code. Giving a customer code has some issues, so why not avoid these?  Its a good idea to  never ever give a customer code. Instead give them elbow grease, insight, training, business acumen,  marketing know-how, custom graphics arts,  disk space, and cpu cycles.  Thus the product isnt actually osc, its these other things, and there's no problem fully disclosing that osc is the underlying software and technology. [we are apparently only required to do that on the admin pages].  
If I've mis-spoken then someone  kindly  correct me, but  I don't see there being an issue with open source.  Linux is open source and does anybody argue that hostmasters must give away free accounts? No.  The hardware and networking and backups, etc, are what the customer rents, not the O/S.  So hats off to livebuilder, my worthy  competitor.

BTW,  I sort of dont wish to see a flurry of plugs for hundreds of various osc based services here, so  may I gently suggest that seeing livebuilder promoted is actually against forum rules?  If I'm wrong please correct me.   Notice I am not mentioning my own business so as to not  violate forum rules. Anyway, Livebuilder probably didnt know.

I myself   try to give back to  the osc code. Thus I  am working part time on a cool feature that may  someday hopefully be a contribution.  I'd also like to say thanks to the McGrath's for all their input into osc. The download module  is very cool.