[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]
“Merging e-commerce, open-source software, and Linux may be
one of the shrewdest moves of this year and next, as these are the
three areas currently monopolizing the attention of venture
capitalists, stock-market investors, and the general computing
public.“
“That’s what makes TallyMan, OpenMerchant, and Yams — three
highly touted open-source, GPL-licensed e-commerce solutions that
are perfectly suited for Linux — worth looking at, even if they’re
not yet close to a final release. All three products are in
prerelease form, with availability aimed at developers who are
evaluating e-commerce software and who might be interested in
incorporating the e-commerce code into larger projects. And, in the
best tradition of open-source software, all three projects are
being developed in an open environment: you’re welcome to download
the source code, install the current product, and kick the tires.
(Which was, in fact, what we did. We downloaded all three from
their respective Web sites and installed them on a Slackware Linux
7 server. We also took advantage of an online demo provided by
Akopia, the TallyMan developers.)”
“Bringing e-commerce to the Linux world is a challenge of sorts,
as there’s really no track record here. The majority of e-commerce
servers either run on Windows NT or a commercial version of UNIX.
In addition, many application servers are deployed as customized
e-commerce solutions, but the application-server field is only now
beginning to see the huge potential of deployment on Linux systems
(see our overview of application servers and Linux, as well as our
reviews of Cold Fusion 4.5 for Linux and the Zope Application
Server).”