Reduce Software Costs Open Source Technologies Project Spotlight Keyboard Town PALS

KTP is a satisfied customer of Ethix Systems and would like to thank Dan and Nick for all their professional, swift, and effective solutions to our problems. They have been totally supportive and available to our many questions. We finally feel that we have a team that we can count on and has our best interests at heart.

Donna Katz
President

Vision: Keyboard Town PALS has developed a new software product that teaches children of all ages to type on a keyboard using the proper finger technique in only one hour. They are marketing this product to both home users and schools.

Problem: Keyboard Town PALS had a custom shopping cart website developed that was not feature-rich and had several critical security flaws. Their previous developer was slow and frustrating to work with.

Solution: Ethix Systems migrated the shopping cart website onto a Magento shopping cart platform. This opened the door to integrated credit card payments, discount code options, improved shipping methods, and downloadable products. Ethix Systems also continues to provide consultation regarding other software-related problems and questions.
Many people are uncertain as to what is meant by open source software. At a functional level, open source software isn't any different from the software you would find in a store; the difference comes instead in the way it is licensed and distributed. There are different variants of open source licensing, the most common of these being the GNU General Public License. This license states that upon giving someone your software, you must also provide to them the source code to that software in an unencrypted, editable format. You must also provide to them the same rights that you have to modify and resell the software and the knowledge that they do indeed have these rights.
In a situation where you are developing software for resell, open source is not really a viable option. However, almost any other situation can accommodate open source, sometimes even better than closed source software. Here are the top reasons we often recommend employing open source solutions to our clients:

	•	More Cost Effective: Most open source projects are free to download, install, test, and modify. Also, since low-level code can be shared between projects, the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented every time.
	•	More Versatile: Open source software is much easier to modify from both a programming and a legal aspect.
	•	More Transparent: It's easier to know what you're getting with an open source solution - nothing is hidden.

Most of our development is done using PHP and MySQL, which are both open source platforms. It is possible, however, to develop closed source software using these languages - the costs of doing so are just somewhat higher.