$Id: README,v 1.1.1.1 2003/02/20 01:03:52 ptosh Exp $

osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 1 Release Notes
Copyright (c) osCommerce 2003

Monday 17th February, 2003

1. Introduction To osCommerce
2. History Of osCommerce
3. osCommerce Project Developers
4. History Of Releases
5. About osCommerce Milestone Releases
6. About Future osCommerce Releases
7. A Notice To Our Community

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1. Introduction To osCommerce
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osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution under on going development by
the open source community. Its feature packed out-of-the-box installation
allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with
minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved.

osCommerce combines open source solutions to provide a free and open
e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP web scripting language,
the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database server.

With no restrictions or special requirements, osCommerce is able to run on any
PHP3 or PHP4 enabled web server, on any environment that PHP and MySQL
supports, which includes Linux, Solaris, BSD, and Microsoft Windows
environments.

The success of osCommerce not only comes from the development of a rock-solid
framework to base e-commerce solutions on, but also from the community which
the project has attracted.

Through the community osCommerce has been able to grow in many directions
leaving the project developers to focus on the core issues of operating an
online business.

## More information can be found on the osCommerce support site at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com
##
## The osCommerce Community section can be found at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com/community

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2. History Of osCommerce
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osCommerce was first released in March 2000, then called The Exchange Project,
as an example resource study case of how an online shop worked behind the
scenes, while at the same time being a rich example of PHP logic useful to
those who were starting out in, or who were already developing in, PHP.

The project has long matured since then and is now referenced as an open
source based e-commerce solution.

The project name change in December 2001, to osCommerce, was performed to show
this maturity to the public.

## The news archive of osCommerce can be found at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com/about/news

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3. osCommerce Project Developers
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Harald Ponce de Leon
Project Leader
Germany

David Garcia Watkins
Core Developer
Spain

Jan Wildeboer
Core Developer
Germany

Thomas A. Moulton
Core Developer
America

Christian Lescuyer
Support
France

Mark Keith Evans
Support
England

Ian C. Wilson
Support
England

Linda McGrath
Support
America

Matthijs vd Vegte
Support
Netherlands

Thomas Plaenkers
German Webmaster
Austria

## An up-to-date osCommerce team list can be found at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com/about/team

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4. History Of Releases
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6th March, 2001: The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.1

13th December, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.0a

2nd December, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.0

12th June, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.1 Administration Tool

17th May, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.1 Catalog

20th March, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.0 Administration Tool

12th March, 2000: The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.0 Catalog

## osCommerce project releases can be downloaded at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com/downloads

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5. About osCommerce Milestone Releases
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The current development version, osCommerce 2.2-CVS, has been in development
for nearly 2 years. During this time, two events occured which has led to the
delay of finalizing a release for the public.

The first event occured in December 2001 with the project name change from The
Exchange Project to osCommerce.

The second event occured shortly afterwards of the project name change with
the shift of focus on no longer making the pending 2.2 release a Preview
Release release, but a normal standard release making it the first of the kind
for the project.

The focus of both events increased the quality of work put towards the
solution to ensure it works as a whole as advertised. This was strongly
undertaken on the second event with the focus change of "working for new
features" to "working to make sure the current feature set works as
expected".

Both events were a success in securing the main internal logic of the
solution, as during this time many store owners have moved from baseing their
stores on the Preview Release 2.1 release to a daily snapshot of the
developing 2.2 version.

Now that we are near to finalizing the developing 2.2 version, a workboard has
been made available which shows what work is currently pending and what
milestone release it will appear in.

Having milestone releases publicly available at the end of a long development
phase will help the quality of the finalized 2.2 version by providing the
opportunity to report bugs on a fixed release rather than having to report
bugs on a specified date of a daily snapshot which could sometimes not be
known by the reporter.

Bugs will be fixed in the CVS development repository which dailysnaps are
based on and will appear in the next snapshot on the following day, and all
leading milestone and stable releases made available.

## The osCommerce workboard can be found at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard
##
## The osCommerce bug reporter can be found at:
##
## http://www.oscommerce.com/community/bugs

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6. About Future osCommerce Releases
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Due to the current development version of 2.2-CVS being in development for
such a long time, contributions have been made based on daily snapshots which
fragmented support and availability of contributions when logic changed in
leading daily snapshots.

As osCommerce 2.2 will be the first non-Preview Release of the project, and
is being developed with high coding standards, daily snapshots post 2.2 will
become unsupported and be used only for those interested in trying out new
features and bug hunting.

Any serious bugs fixed during the development phase of 2.3 will lead to point
releases becoming available, such as 2.2.1, 2.2.2, etc.

osCommerce 2.3 will be an optimized version of 2.2 which will have PHP 3
compatibility dropped. This change of focus is no longer to keep compatible
with PHP 3, but to keep compatible with PHP 4 when features of the newer PHP
versions are being taken advantage of.

After osCommerce 2.3 is released, development will start on the 3.x series
which will introduce new sexy features such as database independency and
possibly a template engine to contemplate the template structure introduced in
the 2.2 version to ease migrations between project versions

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7. A Notice To Our Community
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We would like to thank the community for supporting us during the long
development phase of 2.2, and for understanding what 2.2 means to us and what
it will eventually mean to those using it.

Special thanks go those that keep the community forums alive, and to those
that have shown their appreciation to project developers by way of donations
or items purchased on the wishlists.

