Tangent: the fact that this question ends up being a conversation (highly unlikely to be one just any site owner could replicate), may need to be revisited for an answer which is applicable to sites other than the SE network's.

+1 We're presently short one regular moderator, couldn't hurt to have another round of elections.

@ZevChonoles in this context "script" would refer to a web application (typically a free and open source application) which runs under LAMP or .NET (though answers may include purpose-built daemons too).

Sorry, did not seem as though you needed a response - community wiki'ed your question as requested.

I believe the reason the original answer stalled was that there were not enough options presented (see list of e-commerce apps for more options) and, even amongst available apps, a well-reasoned list of pro's/con's was lacking. (I'd offer more on that, but the last publicly-available cart app I worked with was osC)

This question is awaiting acknowledgement from other members of mod team, however, this process appears to be perfectly reasonable IMHO. (Unless otherwise directed, I'd prefer to inquire @Teacher's Lounge w/a "do you want this" and let other SE's mods flag do want/do not want when migrating out)

Thank you for taking the time to clarify your position in depth. Your close comment makes more sense to me in that context, though I'm afraid the p tag exercise has apparently been tried (in the "x vs y" format, at least).

@toomanyairmiles If you want to start up a proposal (see link for example) you're welcome to update this question in the format of a proposal and we discuss.

@adityamenon Webmasters chat isn't very busy, but I believe that you'll find StackOverflow chat has a PHP room that would suit your question.