About osCommerce

osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease, and is available for free as an Open Source based solution released under the GNU General Public License.

osCommerce was started in March 2000

Today, osCommerce has been taken to the next level, moving towards an e-commerce framework solution that not only remains easy to setup and maintain, but also making it easier for store administrators to present their stores to their customers with their own unique requirements.

Front

Back End

Licensed Software GNU GPL:

It's good that you know it is the owner of your osCommerce site, but do not own the osCommerce system which uses for it (in the sense that he could not sell it as if it were yours). This means that there are certain copyright laws to be respected. Note that the money that someone pays for the construction of a site using osCommerce, not by way of purchase of the software (because it's free), but the customer pays for the services derived from osCommerce:

in installation
configuration
design and implementation of site
besides the respective holder.

Anyway, no one can ever charge for using osCommerce or prevent anyone from using this system if not violate the terms of the GNU / GLP.

In summary:
Opensource philosophy is based on development cooperation and the initiative to share software freely without users having to pay license fees or royalties for the use.

Obviously there is a clear reality in this world of limited time no one gives anything for pure altruism.

The same developers do such osCommerce Support osCommerce and developments based on a commercial basis to businesses or private companies seeking their services.

Hence we say that Opensource tools are free, but developers time is not. And time means money. Anyone can create sites with osCommerce and charge for their services and those who do not have time or inclination to do so will have to pay for it, in the same way that a person who does not have or has the money to pay a web developer will have to have time, work, effort and research to achieve its purposes.