E-commerce portal development for A & B. Pots and Pans Ltd. using PrestaShop

¶ … Community Involvement Analysis

This project involves the development of an e-commerce portal (online shop) for a & B. Pots and Pans Ltd., a company that specializes in the sale of modern and prestige cookware. The choice of shopping cart solution is a secure and yet open source shopping cart solution known as PrestaShop. PrestaShop is a free and open source e-commerce solution. Its ability to be integrated seamlessly with several payment gateways and processors like Google Checkout, Paypal, Authorize.net, Skrill as well as Payment Pro-by means of an API makes it an ideal software solution for many.

The software is available to users under the Open Source License and was launched successfully in 2007 for use by small and medium scale businesses. PrestaShop is based in the popular Smarty template engine is currently in use in over 100,000 online shops worldwide (Taylor,2011). PrestaShop was nominated and won the Best Open Source E-Commerce Application in the 2010 Packt Open Source Awards (Packt,2012) as well as the Best Open source Application in the 2011 edition of the Open Source Award.

The PrestaShop group was originally base din Paris where it was founded but recently it has opened an office in Miami. The software has over 40 languages with French and English being the only languages that enjoy the full support in all of the version releases. The software's technical support is only available on the company's official forum (PrestaShop,2012a).

PrestaShop extensively uses AJAX in its admin panel with the possibility of easy addition of module block in order to provide extra functionality to the store. These modules are often provide free of charge by the store's independent developers.

Community involvement analysis

The PrestaShop development team uses several methods in promoting as well as developing interest as well as community involvement from various participants. These methods includes free technical support and elaborate documentation from the general community of developers as well as the by updating its licenses on distribution of code to favor coders/developers.

Updating its licenses on distribution of code to favor coders/developers

The company announced sometime in 2011 (Dumez,2011) that they wanted to make the creation as well as distribution of the PrestaShop extensions as well as themes clearer and easier to their community. They did this by updating their licenses on distribution effectively. As of the date when the license was updated, the PrestaShop standard theme as well as modules have been published under the AFL 3.0 license while the entire PrestaShop program with only the exception of certain elements and 3rd party libraries have remained under the usual OSL 3. License without being affected by any changes.

According to these changes in licenses, any derivative work that is created by the application of Prestashop's default modules as well as themes will no longer be compulsory/mandatory to be made public. This condition also applies to the source code. It is worth noting that the AFL 3.0 license is very similar to the OSL 3.0 license with the only exception being that it never requires that the source code of the derivative work be made public as indicated by AFL3 .0-1c. Any changes or development that are made to any PrestaShop file published under the OSL 3.0 license are also to be made public under these changes.

Any changes that are made to various files that are copyrighted as well as distributed under the OSL 3.0 license are noted by Dunez (2011) to be considered as forms of derivative work.It is also important to note that any business or developer have a choice of making their derivative work's source code accessible or not so as to preserve their trade activity as they wish.

The implication of these changes is that the developers/contributors to the PrestaShop development team will have a choice of how to distribute their source code. This freedom helps in the rapid development of derivate works/modules in the software.

Project fitness analysis

In this section, we compare as well as contrast Prestashop open source software against the proprietary shopping cart Volusion. This analysis is done by commenting on the appropriate range of relevant factors in the selection of a software solution.

PrestaShop

Volution

Security

Secured with SSL encryption and is equipped with a security module having an anti-fraud analysis system.

Also secured with SSL encryption and is equipped with a security module having an anti-fraud analysis system.

Hosting

The user provides hosting space/facilities

The user provides hosting space/facilities

Web Design

Has several features for setting up a functional website with features

Also has several features for setting up a functional website with features

Maximum number of products

Unlimited but 250,000+ products significantly compromises software and server performance (PrestaShop,2010)

Unlimited

Hard goods (Tangible products)

Soft Goods (downloadable)

Built-in POS system

Available but not inbuilt (can be bought as an separate module)

Real-time Credit card Processing

SSL-Secure Socket Layer encryption

Automatic tax and shipping calculation

Fraud Protection tools

Affiliate Programs

Available though its Post Affiliate Pro-module/Addon

Coupons

Social Media Connectivity

Product Comparison module

Daily Deals module

No daily deal module

Abandoned Cart e-mail

Loyalty Program

No loyalty program module

Telephone Support

Technical Support is found sites official forum

E-mail support module

Knowledgebase

FAQ section

Tutorials

24/7 Live Support

User Guide

The factors that are significant for a & B. Pots and Pans Ltd. are;

Security

This is because the high level of security would allow the company to suffer less losses due to fraud cases. The use of a fraud-detection technology would also reassure the clients to transact over their e-commerce website

The 24/7 Live Support

Good customer service is an important element of a successful e-commerce website. This is because it has been shown that customer service functionality is an integral element to be considered when designing an e-commerce website (Akhter & Bashir,2008).

Social Media Connectivity

Social media is an important tool for driving up sales. A & B. Pots and Pans Ltd. can use this tool to promote as well as advertise its products online.

The less important features are;

Soft Goods (downloadable) module

This is because the company deals with physical products only.

Maximum number of products

This is because the company deals with products that are less than 250,000 in regard to type

Hosting

The company would easily host its website in multiple locations due to the affordability of web hosting solutions.

License analysis

The PrestaShop runs on a license based on OSL 3.0 (Rosen,2007). The OSL 3.) is noted by Rosen (2007) as a reciprocal (or rather copyleft) license. This is because it effectively imposes a reciprocal form of source code disclosure obligation which is somehow similar but in actual sense narrower that the one of GPL.

This is because under the OSL 3.0 license, the derivative works of an OSL 3.0 licensed original work must be licensed under the OSL 3.0 themselves. The source code is the Derivative Works must therefore be disclosed.

Sublicensing may only occur under similar terms of the original license. Its retaliatory clauses are similar to those used in AFL license. The reciprocity concept is clearly stated in section § 1(c) that effectively authorizes software distribution. The part which effectively states that "with the proviso that copies of Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute or communicate shall be licensed under this Open Software License" (PrestaShop,2012). This statement of reciprocity a well as the definitions of Derivative Works in section § 1(b) is noted by Rosen (2007) to have serious consequences on the use as well as re-distribution of PrestaShop as an OSL-based derivative work.

The use of OSL 3.0 on Patented and Copyrighted Software as well as other Works

The main goal of the OSL 3.0 is to effectively authorize recipients of a given Original Work to adequately exercise any of the copyright and patent rights of a licensor in any Original Work for all purposes that are considered to be consistent with the fundamental principles of open source and free software. The Licensees are therefore allowed to freely distribute copies of a given Original Work that they come across as well as Derivative Works that they may create. This is however subject to the reciprocity conditions of the principles of the OSL 3.0 license.

Copyrightable Works

Even though the OSL 3.0 license is intended for licensing any work which is considered to be an original work of authorship, it can also be used in the licensing of other forms of copyrightable works other than software.

The license can also be used in commercializing software.In regard to source code disclose, the OSL 3.0 states that only the Source Code of an Original Work or that of the altered/modified Derivative to be disclosed mandatorily. If the company wants to embed the software in a product they then sell, the would effectively be able to do this under the current license in order to develop and sustain a sustainable commercial venture. This is captured in the spirit behind open-source software development. No additional licensing may be necessary in the part of the development of the Derivative Works for commercial purposes (Koch,2005).

Recommendation

A & B. Pots and Pans Ltd. should therefore adopt the implementation of the open source software, PrestaShop while keeping in mind the pitfalls of the open source software. In order for the company to sustainably run its operations via the PrestaShop powered shopping cart, it must employ competent PrestaShop developers to troubleshoot, debug and update the software in case of any loopholes.The company must also comply with the requirements of OSL 3.0 license to avoid any costly litigations.