I met a very nice guy a while back who works at the Plainfield Coop. He pointed me at the is4c system (Integrated System for Coops, http://wedge.coop/is4c), which they were evaluating for use there. I looked briefly at it and was very intrigued by it's functionality and resiliency: Each point of sale 'island' runs completely automonously from the rest of the network, and they all sync their Postgres data continuously when operating normally. The interesting thing is that the whole rest of the network could cease to exist, and any island could continue to operate, and would update the rest of the systems when they came back online.
The reason I point you toward a Point of Sale system is that a PoS system at it's core is really an inventory control system. And regardless of the inventory value, tracking how many you have/ need of many individual items or SKUs is job 1 for any PoS system. There are quite a few FOSS PoS systems out there, and they run the gamut from moldy to bleeding edge to robust and spreading fast :) R Rubin Bennett rbTechnologies, LLC 1970 VT Route 14 South East Montpelier, VT 05651 (802)223-4448 http://thatitguy.com "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Voltaire, Essay on Tolerance French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778) -----Original Message----- From: Aaron S. Hawley [mailto:aaron.s.haw...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 12:45 PM To: VAGUE@LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: Re: FOSS alternative to Counterpoint? This is the only one I've heard of -- I've never used it. It's Web-based and written in Perl and looks pretty good. http://www.icdevgroup.org/ On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Richard Jeroloman <jerolo...@hotmail.com> wrote: > "Counterpoint" is an old DOS based inventory control program for large > retail businesses. One of my retail clients is using it to manage > $1,200,000. in inventory and I'm about to recommend that they get something > more up to date. I hate to see them spend a lot of money on an MS Windows > based program. Does anyone know of a FOSS equivalent? > Terry -- In general, we reserve the right to have a poor memory--the computer, however, is supposed to remember! Poor computer. -- Guy Lewis Steele Jr.
