Comments on: OsCommerce: A Lesson in Unmaintainable Code?

By: Mike Seth

Mike Seth — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:04:20 +0000

You are entirely correct. OsCommerse (and Zen Cart) are nightmare. I was forced to work on them both and ever since I refuse any and all requests related to them. It’s hard to imagine an uglier codebase which is so widespread.

ABSTAIN AT ALL COSTS

By: Jason H

Jason H — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 03:35:58 +0000

I recently built a site with oscommerce. Nice app but just as everyone said, it’s all over the place. To install an addin you first have to find the contrib. Then determine which version is full and stble and includes any updates. Then you have to install it in several places hoping that u don’t overwrite a previous contrib. Also, I hate tables… As a CSS designer I was in table hell.

Overall, I got it to work the way I wanted. Very modified, lots of addons, and extra code. For what it’s worth I like oscommerce alot. Although, I will look at Magneto for the next release of the site.

By: Laura Sheldon

Laura Sheldon — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:29:08 +0000

I do not think The osCommerce Project (the new one) will be around for more than a few weeks. In the open source community they have already lost all credibility and respect. They do not seem to think that trademarks are there just for the taking. Copyrights are for other people. Ownership is a word that only applies to them.

No one except for the individuals running the project think that the way they have set up their project is legal but they are not listening to anyone. They are not listening to their potential users, common sense, and the law. Not even the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (case law) agrees with them but they still do not listen.

I feel that if you go there in a couple of weeks you will not find a forum as the sites will be seized.

I feel this will be the end of their project and since there is no other development the whole project will eventually die a slow death (but it is not abandoned as the new project tries to tell everyone).

By: Hans

Hans — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:41:17 +0000

@Nathan - I took the time yesterday to download this so called “fork”. First thing I noticed (and was suspicious of due to their blatant use of the osCommerce name) was that the osCommerce copyright notices have been altered to suit their bogus use of the osCommerce name. This is clearly in breach of the GPL, so anybody who uses it is contributing to the spread of pirated software. Codewise it is the same old spaghetti code and not worth the bother.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:52:25 +0000

I have been working with OSCommerce extensively for almost a couple of years now. I actually switched to oSCMax, which is basically OSCommerce but with some of the contributions already built into it. I did that because when I was trying to add contributions into OSCommerce, I’d run into problems like well you cant run that contribution without first installing that one. And then come to find out I installed the wrong version of one contribution so another version of a new one wouldn’t work. Not to mention none of this is documented anywhere. So I almost gave up on most of the contributions and installed oSCMax since it had so many contributions already built into it. Then I have been making all of my own custom modifications to the system over the last year. Their code is really hacked together and old. I would like to find something new. I’ve done some cool things with it, but sometimes making simple changes will make you rip your hair out.

By: Aidan

Aidan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:59:38 +0000

I’ve worked with osCommerce a fair amount in the past and let me say it was one of the worst programming experiences i’ve ever had.

Although it taught me a lot about how NOT to do things.

By: Citrus

Citrus — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:36:52 +0000

You article hits the nail right on the head. I had EXACTLY the same problems. Embedding logic code and display code together is mad and goes against every design pattern in the book.

http://www.citrusbright.com/?p=43

Magento is a far superior product in terms of both functionality and also maintainability. I’m not knocking OSCommerce but there comes a time when things move on and it’s now run it’s time.

By: Zachary Danger

Zachary Danger — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:32:07 +0000

I worked with OSC for almost a year and half and you’ve eloquently summed up all of the frustrations. It sort of beats you down into doing work you’re not exactly proud of. Yes, you *could* try to refactor, but in the end the legacy code wins out and you just learn to encapsulate your modifications so as to not disturb the OSC gremlins.

By: James Carr

James Carr — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:28:07 +0000

@Jeff Thanks… the errors have been corrected. It’s bound to happen when you throw a post together really quickly!

By: James Carr

James Carr — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:21:53 +0000

@Harknell INDEED! The thing that makes open source great is that anyone can contribute to it… I think another failing of oscommerce in that they never allow people to join the core development team, instead it’s handpicked and only consists of five devs, which afaik only two are really working on it.

Why they don’t give people commit privileges once their coding style is considered “worthy” is beyond me. *shrugs*