We are planning to start work on a standalone POS which can use a local db to have a stable and robust offline pos function.
Plan is to use PyQT5 as this way we can use existing libraries against other options of using flutter or web-app. We want to base it on Version-14 or 15.
Priority Features but not limited to:
VFD Display support.
Weighing scale function either using Barcode logic or direct link to the weighing scale.
GS1 Code scanning logic.
Batch and serial number wise sales.
Sales Return from POS itself.
Handle advance functions like Loyalty on pos, Gift card, discount voucher and coupons.
Credit Sales.
Many More, which are existing functions of Version-12 offline-pos.
I would like to know if there is any interest in these functions in a standalone pos. The license of the codes is still not decided, it will depend on the investment needed.
If there is interest in this requirement then we can create a bounty for the same.
Thanks for the quick response, but sadly many of the features not in Frappe Book, so if you work on frappe books then it will not achieve the core objective in short period.
I have listed the priority functions, we will focus on them first.
What?
If priority
0. License
is not right, all the shiny features are nothing compared to the potential social consequences.
Sorry to be that blunt, but I saw too many things (and people) turn into dust due to such issues.
FBooks already have a lot of functionalities implemented, I’m not sure what is it that you are referring to.
Also not sure how building from scratch is going to take any less time.
Your phrase leaves open what kind of license you will choose, and I was even unable to determine if it will be open source or not, especially given that you seem to make your choice dependent on investments, thus some kind of investors. What are their expectations?
The history of open source software reports examples of big battles around licensing. It started very early in the open source history, and there were full-blown strategies to completely crush FOSS, fortunately unsuccessful. So far at least.
Also, many investors try to monetarize once everybody got convenienced into a project, and then turn the dial to try and up their earnings against those lured in who got used to the dose of free sugar. The somewhat vulgar but kind of sticky term “enshittification” (other term: platform decay, which I just learned while searching the link for this reply) stands for some of the scheming which has happened in many cases:
Licensing of software and other “intellectual property” even seems to be part of very heavy international pressure in some cases.
There is a right measure to find, but in some cases things seem to have gotten way out of proportion.
That’s why I became quite prudent before engaging in any project.
Three decades or so ago I started to contribute dictionary entries to some public, collaborative dictionary project, and some day the guy simply said he’ll be changing the system and the data can’t be downloaded any more, he didn’t want to put the effort in “alone” any more. How much time did the contributors put into it? There is hardly a way to know. But that was as if my (and everybody else’s) effort was declared worthless, or simply “his”, after first setting it up in another way which was useful to me, because I created my own work interface around the data, the web interface didn’t fit my purpose. Then all of a sudden that was gone. I still had the data, but of course over time it becomes stale, and you upgrade it alone, but such data should be free for all, if many people contribute. But many a time it’s not any more. Many data collaboration was abused like this.
Amazon tried to delete books paid for in order to censor stuff on “their” platform (kindle). Can you still call such data “a book”? That you “own” as a user? That can be transmitted over time? Over centuries? The public outcry made them put them back fast.
What’s in the internet can disappear at any moment! If you rely on it, you better take precautions!
The dictionary stuff felt like a betrayal and stealing my work. As if in a whim. We contributors somehow didn’t match his expectations, so he one-sidedly decided that all of the sudden it’s all his.
Maybe I’m somewhat over-suspicious, but time has shown that this kind of thing happens again and again, if not explicitly excluded right from the start.
In french they say “s’il y a un flou, il y a un loup” (“if there is something blurry, then there is a wolf”).
The cheap copy-ability of data (and code) should provide benefit to everybody, and not just to some entities, but some want to monopolize this. Via licensing, that’s the means. “Legal” scheming, to the point it becomes squarely immoral.
It’s about control, about raking in profits, creating monopolies, and from the users’ perspective about not being treated with respect and as a free person, who also has a say. So prudence is necessary if you don’t want to get entangled.
See how some entities operate still today:
They were the ones of the “Halloween documents”:
And these guys own github.
Maybe the info of the hero who helped the whistleblowing is more interesting than the WP article: Halloween Document 8
FOSS complicates monetization for software creators, of course, but what’s really the alternative if we want to live in a free world, where everybody has a say, the possibility to learn freely, to contribute with freedom-, person- and community-friendly terms?
I’ve been using the Frappe Books in the past 48 hours and I can only say that it deems a huge potential to utilize it as a standalone POS, to sync with an online master DB.
