I wasn't "putting down" osCommerce, just seeing it for what it is. Even as a base platform the code isn't clean. I don't rate myself as a programmer but I've spent many hours in the code adding contributions and making mods and I know enough to know that the foundations are shaky before you start down that road. Having said that if it didn't exist someone would have to invent it. I deeply appreciate its existence but there comes a time to move on and get serious.
I agree that osCommerce has its problems, if it didn't we wouldn't have needed to implement our own custom version of it for our sitebuilder service for our clients, and we wouldn't feel the need to advise business people to avoid going the DIY osCommerce base install or osCommerce template install route.
However it is a very complex e-commerce system - multi-lingual, multi-currency etc - and the more complex a system gets, the more difficult (but not impossible) it is to keep the code clean. For a system developed via the open source community with a number of previous versions behind it, it is not bad, for a large system it is split up to a fair extent code-wise and database table-wise, (as always, it could be better, which is why v3 alpha is currently being worked on, and so on).
osCommerce has been doing something right though, since it has met so many shop owner's diverse needs and it has so many (possibly the largest number of any open source e-commerce system) contributions from third party developers, and even brave non-programmers have taken it on and built shops (although I don't recommend this).
I think this success is partly due to its pragmatic, get the job done, approach. The original developers obviously weren't designing the system to win any awards for object-oriented architectural design from the academics and purists out there, if they were they would probably have chosen a different language to PHP 4 in the first place. Their prime concern was results for the shop owner and open source freedom, and perhaps in some ways the people behind osCommerce are pragmatists like you, since you say: "We are not ecommerce theorists who are creating software that we think will work. We are eTailers creating software from live and ongoing ecommerce experience that we know works".
If the osCommerce team had cleaned the code up too much, adding extra layers of abstraction and loose coupling to the design, perhaps its original uptake wouldn't have been so good since only talented developers who understand the more advanced design concepts behind large systems would have worked out where in the code (or otherwise) a change was required, who knows? ZenCart is a derivative of osCommerce which has focused on cleaning the code up more, but it is not so widespread, not so well supported within the community, and does not have so many contributions as osCommerce, ZenCart has not taken over from osCommerce, it still follows in osCommerce's shadow.
The fact remains that the osCommerce source code is open, you can see it for what it is, warts and all, and if you don't like it you are free to change it. I don't know whether the code behind Actinic is clean, dirty, buggy or flawed since it is a closed source system and I cannot see the code. On the other hand, I also cannot see the code behind the Microsoft's Windows operating system to comment on whether it is clean or dirty, but I do know its design is heavily flawed, otherwise there wouldn't be viruses, trojans, spyware, firewalls, etc. and I do get the impression that some of Microsoft's software is created by 'theorists' rather than pragmatists.
The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. I hope there'll be one or two beta testers here when Amcart is ready to roll.
I wish you the best of luck in your project. It can be difficult enough designing a system which meets the needs for one client, let alone 2 or 3 or many clients, and designing a truly generic system can be an even more challenging (and sometimes thankless) task.
I also wish you luck with your ampalian website, and I hope the coming migration from your osCommerce system to your brand new AmCart system doesn't throw up too many problems, doesn't upset the old customers who like and prefer the old system!, and doesn't affect your google ranking too much.
