gBilling Free Software Cyber Cafe Billing System

I am not yet giving up my intention to encourage people to run a cyber cafe business base on free open source software, but I got a little bit frustrated with Point Of Sales/Cyber Cafe Management System development progress for cyber cafe purpose with this community.

But in this early year I've found new cyber cafe billing system at sourceforge.net called gBilling, it was writen by Ardhan Madras, I tried to use it at my cyber cafe but the software does not has any other language than the Indonesian only, beside that the rates setting is quite difficult to be configured, so I just stick with CCLFOX as my billing system for my cyber cafe.

gBilling screenshot taken from my billing counter.

Otherwise, the gBilling system is quite nice with clean and smooth interface, easy to navigate, and recently I had visit their forum to find out their latest progress, and I've notice that they now are working up with Beta 3.

Down here is my translation about the gBilling software, the contents of the original web site is in Indonesia, sorry for the bad translation.

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What is gBilling?

gBilling is a payment system application warnet (internet cafe billing system) which consists of server and client, gBilling expected to run on multi-platform (Linux, BSD, MacOS, or Microsoft Windows). gBilling written in C, with a GTK2 GUI toolkit (The GIMP Toolkit), and using SQLite as a database system and data storage. gBilling will always be under the GNU Public License (GPL) version 2, please read this license before the use, distribution and modification gBilling. Support gBilling development by participating in the writing program code, write documentation, bug reports or make a donation. Incoming donations will greatly help the development of gBilling, like to buy Linux distros, buy the operating system that has not been tested like Windows Vista (never thought pirated; p), and other purposes. To make a donation, please contact the author.


Brief history

The author makes this application at the first time when he was writing a network application for FreeBSD server (March, 2008) roughly similar to the workings of internet cafe billing applications, and at the time the project is completed the network application, the writer interested in writing the actual warnet(cybercafe/intercafe) billing application. The author chose to port it on GNU / Linux (Linux) because Linux is an ideal system for Warnet. Despite the time that not many (like hanging out and many have heard the song; p) he began to write gBilling from scratch. Because the socket programming on any compatible system, and libraries used to run in all these systems, gBilling should also be able to walk on any system with no or little modification, like Winsock in Windows that uses special functions (but still provide socket compatibility with UNIX / BSD) and the error code that is not like UNIX. GBilling first written in Python, as the development of these applications such as system calls, the API libraries are used, a scripting language is considered no longer appropriate and gBilling rewritten to C, so far for the GLib wrapper functions POSIX and Windows API.

gBilling model is base on TCP / IP server model, which means that the server can serve the client request simultaneous (concurrent) without waiting for another client request to completed. This concurrent is achieved by using a thread to each client request such as scheduling, timeout or socket operation (IO). gBilling properly programmed to meet the conditions of thread-safe, but can not be guaranteed gBilling is thread-safe, because of that, a program examination should be done with application debugging, or using thread-safety detection.

Debugging complex applications and multi-thread is not easy, we must have patience, skill, and a lot of time (yes, we should have plenty of time; p). gBilling written in C for speed and portability, unlike high-level languages such as Java, PHP or Python to access system calls and APIs via its runtime (which is also a system-level programming). C will teach us how to access system calls and the API directly from libraries provided by the system.


GBilling Why?

Because gBilling is free software (free software), you can take advantage of this application. You can modify according to your needs, you can learn how to work and make applications gBilling your own billing, you can participate in developing this program, and others. gBilling will always be written with the portability mangacu(I dont know what it mean), gBilling will not refer only to one system which would be a waste of time.

gBilling not made for profit or reward, gBilling made to support a free operating system like Linux to be used properly for the cafe. Once again gBilling is free software under the GNU General Public License version 2, not the OSI Open Source, BSD license and so on.


GBilling features:

    * Multiplatform (UNIX: Linux, MacOS, BSD, and Microsoft Windows) to 32-bit architecture and 64-bit

    * Concurrent TCP / IP server model (IPv4)

    * Multithreaded (per-client thread, with GLib Thread)

    * Orientation storage database (SQLite embedding)

    * Full control of the server (logout, shutdown, restart, close / open the login client)

    * Detects inactive clients (client programs that are not active or client computer)

    * System logging and log export to CSV format

    * Recovery (data recovery server / client for the power loss, system crash)

    * Authentication users (GLib data hashing)

    * Chat

    * System package

    * Item System (The items are sold in cafes displayed on the client)

    * Customize according to your internet cafe (warnet name, slogan, address)

    * Free software; p

Other features such as a system member (members), vouchers, screen capture and others will be developed in the next version. 

Website : http://gbilling.sourceforge.net/ 
Forum : http://gbilling.freeforums.org/ 
More Screenshot : http://gbilling.sourceforge.net/screenshot.html