

Will bartenders hack your Point of Sale? - cmeranda
http://www.chompstack.com/blog/2010/05/26/will-bartenders-hack-your-point-of-sale-when-open-source-and-restaurants-collide/

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Nwallins
This article is well-meaning but totally misses the point:

It doesn't matter if your POS is built on open source technology if someone
has the ability to install new software onto it.

i.e. UltraSecureAwesomeClosedSourceOS is just as vulnerable to having new
(rogue) software installed onto the device as any other OS. The hardware or
firmware should have controls in place to prevent this or make it extremely
difficult, regardless of what is running on top.

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pbhjpbhj
I'd guess, as a co-owner of a shop myself, that the reason medium sized
retailers spend a lot on POS is the same reason they don't represent
themselves in court. It looks easy, you might get away with doing it cheaper,
but there's a lot that can go wrong and a lot at stake if things don't pan
out. Paying someone to pull you out of a hole is more expensive than paying
someone else to dig it in the first place.

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ams6110
Scale it up a bit, and it's the same reason a lot of enterprises buy Oracle
(or other big expensive proprietary software) when OSS alternatives would be
suitable.... they want someone to call (or worst case, blame) when problems
arise.

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cmeranda
What about a freemium model where you could purchase optional support, like
MySQL?

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jroes
Pretty funny. Although I kinda hoped it was something else. Like a cool point
of sale system that could be extended by its operators to provide fun new
functionality with an intuitive graphical interface.

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cmeranda
I'll let you know when we write that post :)

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tjmaxal
The real problem here is that most restaurant owners are too ignorant to
realize when they are getting fleeced by a POS seller.

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cmeranda
It's a paradox: restaurant owners are often disdainful/fearful of technology,
so they are the most easily swindled when it comes to understanding a value
equation involving technology.

