While that’s all fine and dandy, when was the last time you went to Wally world and noticed their wonderful cash registers? Their setup is essentially two 2×20 screens (one for the cashier, one for the customer) and a generic IBM POS keyboard. Can you get a full-screen, interactive POS application to run on a 2×20 display? Unfortunately, as it’s conceived, you really can’t.

Point of Sales technology has made long strides from where it once was. We’ve gone from an era of proprietary processors and software, to industry-standardized components and a start on the Open Sourcing of Point of Sales backend hardware. I don’t think that we’ll really see a true retail movement of open-sourcing of the actual Point of Sales code because a lot of retail companies consider their POS applications something that gives them an advantage over their competition. While this is true, how many places are using a stock IBM setup, versus, a custom-written, in-house setup? Giant Eagle has IBM, with their customizations. Sears/KMart use their own, custom-written application. While I know it’s not an apples to apples comparison, I think that it does a lot to provide some insight into the world of POS Applications.

Then, you have to deal with POS Hardware, and their interactions (for example, the Signature Capture devices need to be treated similar to PIN-pad readers, but, they’re two totally different classes of hardware, and have different requirements in order to operate at their full functionality, within industry security guidelines for both payment processing and information handling.

Finally, you have to have a payment gateway, and again, we’re back in the land of proprietary standards. You can’t just use authorize.net for your in-person transactions. You have to store the signature, check image, or whatever else, locally, or send it to your regional or national office. This doesn’t even include handling your ERP backend, or integration to timeclocks, payroll, or other specials (deli, made-to-order goods, gift card activation, etc).

All of this boils down to a large amount of $$ to the store, and they don’t want to add a new widget, only to let their competitor know that they’re going to release feature “foo.” Yes, I know that Dual-Licensing could solve this problem, but, grocery stores aren’t known for their legal skills, let alone programming talent.

Surfing the web has not produced anything on OpenSource POS systems that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach. You might reconsider how CIOs actually behave as opposed to how you think they should behave. If they are not coming to OpenSource, then perhaps OpenSource has to go to them.

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