Its been a long time. I haven’t really had anything to say lately, I have just been sitting back and watching the show. Its a pretty interesting ride actually. I see long time developers leaving. I see the community starting to cannibalize itself. Well, whats left of the community that is. Its pretty bare around the forums these days. And to think, some people were really counting on version 1.7 to breath some life back into things. It seems like the only thing that has been revived is bad decisions.

Nifty title huh? Did you know that is how PrestaShop describes themselves? Not as open source, but freemium. It perfectly explains why features are removed from every version, then sold back as paid modules doesn’t it? It makes sense as to why no new features have been added for years too. Freemium.

This is e-commerce not Candy Crush

Did you know along with the freemium is about to come encoded modules? No really, they are coming to an addons store near you soon. They will even be encrypted using the Ethereum block chain. That is a pretty nifty way to limit your site even more. I assume this sounds good to developers, that is until people decide they don’t like buying encoded / copy protected modules. Then what happens? More of the same thing?

PrestaTrust

Likely you haven’t heard about this. I for one hadn’t until someone messaged me about it. Its a trademark that was filed earlier this year by PrestaShop. You can read the trademark filing here. But what is PrestaTrust? What is the purpose of it? Googling around will not get you far. Other than domain information and trademark information there is virtually nothing on the web about it. Its super top secret apparently. I am thinking it is because of how many people will not like it…

But, if you Google hard enough, you can find this page. It looks pretty nifty, apparently (from what I get from Google translate) it is about a technology competition and grant program. Seems pretty innocuous I guess, but whats it have to do with anything? In the right hand column of the site, there is a press release titled, Lauréats de la 5e édition.

Its a pdf that you can download. Its in French, which is expected since it is a French competition. If you scroll to the document to page 61 it gets quite interesting. This is where PrestaTrust is talked about. I am going to expect a fair amount of you can read French. I cannot. I expect some of you cannot as well. So I am posting the Google translate of the PrestaShop section below. Don’t blame me if it is not perfect, it is Google’s fault.

PrestaTrust Translation

PRESTATRUST

Company: PRESTASHOP

Theme: Better consumption (payment, finance, trade)

Development of a technology-based certification and traceability solution

Blockchain in order to promote the free software economy by responding to the challenges

Code traceability and compliance with open source software licenses

PrestaShop and the PrestaTrust project

The business model of PrestaShop, an open source eCommerce software publisher, is based

On a so-called “freemium” model which relies essentially on the sale of software modules

additional.

An ecosystem in search of trust

We note that lack of confidence and sufficient traceability in the open world

Source, a significant part of the developers does not want to offer its modules on

The marketplace (fears that the modules will be altered, that licenses are diverted and

That purchases are not made).

A marketplace ensuring traceability and immutability using Blockchain

PrestaTrust, which aims to be a non-centralized certification and traceability solution

Open, based on blockchain technology in order to promote the economy of free software in

Responding to the stakes around code traceability and compliance with open software licenses

Source.

The PrestaTrust marketplace therefore has two main purposes linked to this objective of confidence

:

• Ensure the registration of the modules made available via PrestaShop and manage the

Rights attached to each module as defined by the developer;

• Allow traceability of posted notices, in order to better inform the eCommerce

Potential buyer on the quality of the module he wishes to acquire and guarantee the developer

That the reviews actually come from members of the PrestaShop user community

Of its module.

62

An economic impact expected for the PrestaShop ecosystem and for the Open ecosystem

Source

Thanks to this traceability, to this decentralized and low-cost security, the

Of PrestaShop and of all the contributors will be largely

increases. As for eCommerceers, they will also be reassured about the modules acquired on

Market, since they will also have the means to check in real time via the

Site PrestaTrust, the origin and integrity of their modules.

PrestaTrust is a reusable product with the ambition to automate and industrialize the

Management of software licenses at the very heart of computer code, for the entire

Open Source world.

Contact: Corinne LEJBOWICZ, Director General; Corinne.Lejbowwicz@prestashop.com

Huh?

That didn’t come out too clear did it? Basically the only thing you can garner from it is that PrestaShop is “freemium” software that exists to sell modules, and they care more about selling more modules. The whole premise as stated above is to sell more modules. Feed the beast. Bring more developers to feed the beast. They heavily use the guise of finding out if modules are authentic to push this tripe.

To be honest I have bought modules off the addons store. But not once did I find myself saying “Hmm, I wonder if this module that I purchased off addons and downloaded off addons, is really the real module developed by the real developer”. Usually my exchanges are more like this”Why is this fucking module not working!” Let me wait 6 months while I try to get support for this module, who was the developer? “Developed by PrestaShop”.. Fuck….

Maybe this is a good move. People love DRM these days. I know I sure do, especially for things that I count on. Especially for things my livelihood depends on. At least 3 times a week I seek out something with DRM to add to my DRM collection. Not.

So…

Where are we now? Will encoding the modules bring more developers and revive the platform? I see other platforms that don’t use encoded modules failing, like Wordpress, WooCommerce, Magento, and, Opencart. Oh, no, sorry they are growing without DRM. So who makes these choices? I don’t want DRM in my shop. I like open source software, not encoded rights managed software. This is a main reason I am not using a paid e-commerce platform, I support open source. This is not true to open source.

What then?

Honestly I do not know. I have been watching something rather exciting though. Apparently earlier this year some people forked PrestaShop’s 1.6 version into a new platform. It seems very active actually. I have been lurking the forums for a couple of months and reading their blog posts, things seem to be picking up for them. They seem to be making the right partnerships.

So I tried the software last week. It looks and functions very similar to PrestaShop. But there were two marked differences. One, it was a lot faster. The other is that it actually seemed bug free. Well, maybe not all bugs, but the bugs that have been troubling me have apparently been fixed. My shop on 1.6.1.15 has had terrible problems with rounding, discounts, and taxes being used at the same time. We handle sales to government organizations, so having an invoice off by 1–2 cents is actually a huge problem for us. So now I am considering migrating. From what I am reading in their forums and their blog posts, there is almost 100% compatibility with PrestaShop, which is nice and needed for me to make the jump. If you are stuck in a PrestaShop site and not wanting to upgrade to a broken 1.7 or stick around and see the DRM, you might should check it out. The fork’s name is thirty bees.