LAMP debabbled
I'm going to wrap up my open source series (for now) with an easy one. It's no coincidence that open source products have tended to attract each other and share a common fan base, so today's entry covers the platform that binds them all together on the web, known by its acronym, LAMP.What is LAMP?
No, it's not that shiny thing in the corner. LAMP is just an acronym for the unofficial bundling of four different products: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. That's a slight oversimplification, as the "P" sometimes stands for PHP's scripting cousins, Perl and Python. LAMP is really just the combination of pieces that you need to run a full-blown website: (1) Linux, the operating system, (2) Apache, the web server software, (3) MySQL, the database engine, and (4) PHP, the server-side scripting language.
What's in it for me?
LAMP, plain and simple, is a complete platform to host and develop a website, it's powerful, and it's basically free. Many hosting companies have accounts that come with LAMP pre-bundled, making them cost effective while still giving you a complete platform for developing powerful and professional online applications. If you're running your own servers, LAMP certainly takes a lot more know-how (as does running any web server yourself), but it's extremely cost effective and has a huge user-base to look to online for help.
