Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 12:46:23 -0600 From: Jon Passki <jon@caffeinated-systems.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Point of Sale (POS) and FreeBSD Message-ID: <20030125184623.GF52156@hope.caffeinated-systems.com>
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Hello All,
I'm preparing to commit myself to a start-up business, and one area I am currently researching is the Point of Sale (POS) systems. While going into the business model isn't quite necessary at the moment (maybe later), I've noticed a small market that includes FreeBSD in POS applications/devices. Some of these are of commercial interests, while others are open source projects under various licensing terms. I am soliciting feedback on my basic design, and wish to start a dialog on how others have used/not used FreeBSD in POS environments.
Some POS Systems:
--) L'ane is a POS system that seems to not care too much on the underlying O/S [1].
--) ViewTouch seems to be a commercial POS provider/reseller [2].
--) BananaHead POS, while linux-based, seems nifty [6]
As I understand it (in practice and through research), is the POS environment can somewhat be split in two areas: terminals and back office/business logic. Support on the terminals seems a conglomerate of glue and patience. E.g. receipt printers have support through direct codes (L'ane does this through perl) or through CUPS [3], as in the case of the Star TSP{600-800} line of thermal printers [4]. Also, some touch screens are supported by XFree86 modules. Smartcards have some support through MUSCLE [5]. And the rest seems doable ;-)
The back-office stuff really depends on the business model, but again, there's stuff out there. L'ane and others have their own operational packages. Then going into the financial/administrative portion, there's projects like SQL-Ledger for accounting/GL stuff [7]. In designing my own POS, I'm wishing to avoid pitfalls that others have encountered. I have no information up yet on this, but when I do (seasoned procrastinator :-), I want to offer all I can back to the FreeBSD community. So....
What else have you all seen? What are the issues? Is this something that if available as a port(s), what would you like to see? Are there vendors that have been receptive/black holes about open source support?
Thanks for your time on this!
Jon Passki
p.s. I probably won't stay subscribed to -chat for too long, so please include me directly on any follow-up.
[1] http://l-ane.sourceforge.net
[2] http://www.viewtouch.com
[3] http://www.cups.org
[4] http://www.starmicronics.com
[5] http://www.linuxnet.com
[6] http://www.bananahead.com/pos/index.html
[7] http://www.sql-ledger.org
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