$Id: README,v 1.3 2003/07/12 09:38:07 hpdl Exp $ osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 Release Notes Copyright (c) osCommerce 2003 Saturday 12th July, 2003 1. Introduction To osCommerce 2. History Of osCommerce 3. osCommerce Project Developers 4. History Of Releases 5. About osCommerce Milestone Releases 6. About Future osCommerce Releases 7. A Notice To Our Community ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. 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. ## The news archive of osCommerce can be found at: ## ## http://www.oscommerce.com/about/news ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. osCommerce Project Developers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Harald Ponce de Leon Project Leader Germany David Garcia Watkins Core Developer Spain Jan Wildeboer Core Developer Germany Thomas A. Moulton Core Developer America Christian Lescuyer Support France Mark Keith Evans Support England Ian C. Wilson Support England Linda McGrath Support America Matthijs vd Vegte Support Netherlands ## An up-to-date osCommerce team list can be found at: ## ## http://www.oscommerce.com/about/team ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. History Of Releases ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6th March, 2001: The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.1 13th December, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.0a 2nd December, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.0 12th June, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.1 Administration Tool 17th May, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.1 Catalog 20th March, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.0 Administration Tool 12th March, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.0 Catalog ## osCommerce project releases can be downloaded at: ## ## http://www.oscommerce.com/downloads ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. About osCommerce Milestone Releases ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The current development version, osCommerce 2.2-CVS, has been in development for nearly 2 years. During this time, two events occured which has led to the delay of finalizing a release for the public. The first event occured in December 2001 with the project name change from The Exchange Project to osCommerce. The second event occured shortly afterwards of the project name change with the shift of focus on no longer making the pending 2.2 release a Preview Release release, but a normal standard release making it the first of the kind for the project. The focus of both events increased the quality of work put towards the solution to ensure it works as a whole as advertised. This was strongly undertaken on the second event with the focus change of "working for new features" to "working to make sure the current feature set works as expected". Both events were a success in securing the main internal logic of the solution, as during this time many store owners have moved from baseing their stores on the Preview Release 2.1 release to a daily snapshot of the developing 2.2 version. Now that we are near to finalizing the developing 2.2 version, a workboard has been made available which shows what work is currently pending and what milestone release it will appear in. Having milestone releases publicly available at the end of a long development phase will help the quality of the finalized 2.2 version by providing the opportunity to report bugs on a fixed release rather than having to report bugs on a specified date of a daily snapshot which could sometimes not be known by the reporter. Bugs will be fixed in the CVS development repository which dailysnaps are based on and will appear in the next snapshot on the following day, and all leading milestone and stable releases made available. ## The osCommerce workboard can be found at: ## ## http://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard ## ## The osCommerce bug reporter can be found at: ## ## http://www.oscommerce.com/community/bugs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. About Future osCommerce Releases ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Due to the current development version of 2.2-CVS being in development for such a long time, contributions have been made based on daily snapshots which fragmented support and availability of contributions when logic changed in leading daily snapshots. As osCommerce 2.2 will be the first non-Preview Release of the project, and is being developed with high coding standards, daily snapshots post 2.2 will become unsupported and be used only for those interested in trying out new features and bug hunting. Any serious bugs fixed during the development phase of 2.3 will lead to point releases becoming available, such as 2.2.1, 2.2.2, etc. osCommerce 2.3 will be an optimized version of 2.2 which will have PHP 3 compatibility dropped. This change of focus is no longer to keep compatible with PHP 3, but to keep compatible with PHP 4 when features of the newer PHP versions are being taken advantage of. After osCommerce 2.3 is released, development will start on the 3.x series which will introduce new sexy features such as database independency and possibly a template engine to contemplate the template structure introduced in the 2.2 version to ease migrations between project versions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. A Notice To Our Community ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We would like to thank the community for supporting us during the long development phase of 2.2, and for understanding what 2.2 means to us and what it will eventually mean to those using it. Special thanks go those that keep the community forums alive, and to those that have shown their appreciation to project developers by way of donations or items purchased on the wishlists.