OT: Web retailers go open-source

Story by Carol Sliwa

FEBRUARY 23, 2004 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - Fry Inc. has been using Microsoft
Corp. software to design, develop and host e-commerce sites during much of
the past eight years. But that's expected to change.

The Ann Arbor, Mich., company, whose clients include retailers Eddie Bauer,
Crate & Barrel and Brookstone, tomorrow plans to launch a Java-based
offering called Open Commerce Platform that carries no licensing fee for the
customer. And Fry is happy to run it on freely available open-source
technologies such as the Linux operating system, Tomcat application server
and Apache Web server.

That means that an online retailer that hires Fry to build, refresh or
reconstruct its e-commerce site can avoid all software licensing costs if it
decides to go with a completely open-source package. That's not
insignificant, since licensing fees can run as high as $300,000 per year for
a major retail Web site, according to CEO David Fry.

So far, only one customer has opted to go the fully open-source route.
Maidenform Inc. in Bayonne, N.J., will run OCP on a Tomcat application
server and Red Hat Linux, with an open-source MySQL database server on the
back end.
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I would have thought they'd use an object database with a thin-wire
infrastructure.  Hmm.

Mark "Well, it's better than politics" W.

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In message < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >, Mark Wonsil
< XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes

[Re Fry Inc. offering an Open Commerce platform]



They are certainly a company for which comprehensive support must be a
major consideration....

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