Introduction To osCommerce

osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution under on going development by
the open source community. Its feature packed out-of-the-box installation
allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with
minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved.

osCommerce combines open source solutions to provide a free and open
e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP web scripting language,
the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database server.

With no restrictions or special requirements, osCommerce is able to run on any
PHP3 or PHP4 enabled web server, on any environment that PHP and MySQL
supports, which includes Linux, Solaris, BSD, and Microsoft Windows
environments.

The success of osCommerce not only comes from the development of a rock-solid
framework to base e-commerce solutions on, but also from the community which
the project has attracted.

Through the community osCommerce has been able to grow in many directions
leaving the project developers to focus on the core issues of operating an
online business.

More information can be found on the osCommerce support site at:

http://www.oscommerce.com

The osCommerce Community section can be found at:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community

History Of osCommerce

osCommerce was first released in March 2000, then called The Exchange Project,
as an example resource study case of how an online shop worked behind the
scenes, while at the same time being a rich example of PHP logic useful to
those who were starting out in, or who were already developing in, PHP.

The project has long matured since then and is now referenced as an open
source based e-commerce solution.

The project name change in December 2001, to osCommerce, was performed to show
this maturity to the public.