I feel the need to comment on the latest news snippet on the IPM website which claims, “the world’s first entirely free, open-source point-of-sale system” is Information Systems 4 Co-Ops. However, I have been aware of PHP POS for some time now, which makes me suspicious that IS4C is in fact the “world’s first”.
In any case, these kinds of systems seem like an excellent use of the trend toward browser-based applications, and especially shared applications with centralized data storage. I have also seen effective implementations of medical records management systems written entirely in PHP. Web-native applications are coming evermore into the mainstream with applications like groupware and wikis, and software developers are starting to realize the tremendous flexibility and cost-savings associated with a web-native approach. The somewhat lesser-known and understood PHP-GTK framework can also be leveraged for increased real-time capabilities by rolling out true desktop applications with the same underlying PHP source as their web-native counterparts. These days, the power of centralized, web-enabled applications far outweighs the user interface issues involved with HTML–issues circumvented by a host of supplemental technologies including JavaScript. And PHP remains at the forefront of providing that web-native solution for rapid deployment and cost savings.