ostinelli|net

In these days I am particularly busy in finding out what is really available as Open Source platforms in a variety of application fields.

The economics behind Open Source are always particularly intriguing, and I am unceasingly interested into digging why particular projects are financed, others abandoned even though they were successful, some others passed over to foundations, or on the contrary have become closed source.

I don’t mean to enter here this kind of discussion, though. Not yet. Today, I just want to point out an Open Source project I’ve been monitoring from distance, and I can gladly see today that it finally went 1.0 on March 31st.

The project is Magento, and it’s an Open Source eCommerce platform developed by Varien.

The reasons why I believe this platform should be followed closely are:

• An appealing number of impressive features, an amount which can’t even be found in many commercial platforms.
• Finally, an eCommerce platform with a browsing and purchasing process that doesn’t feel like blowing dust away from old books on an antique dealer’s shop. Most of the other stable eCommerce platforms, such as Zen Cart, thought to be one of the most stable and reliable platforms currently available in Open Source, can’t keep up with Magento’s recommendation engine, product comparison, best selling articles, tags, community opinions, related products and other features that are immediately available to Magento’s users. This is truly the first Web 2.0 eCommerce Open Source platform that I’ve seen around.
• Everything is thought to ease the process of adopting Magento for your needs. You may find ScreenCasts, ScreenShots, Designers Guides, Knowledge Base, Wiki, Groups, Forums, as long as more professional services such as Training and Partners programs for your necessities.

You may take a look yourself at the Magento frontend, and the administrative backend. You may be surprised, or even scared, by the available functionalities offered by the latter. This is why such a powerful and complex tool needs the great community support that these guys seem to be strongly pushing. Hopefully, they manage to allow a simple out-of-the-box store to be ready in minutes, while opening up the more complex features when needed to advanced users.

Seeing that Google is now ranking them between the top 5 results for a search on Open Source eCommerce gives a clue about the fact that the guys at Varien might have tickled an interesting left open spot.