LAMP - Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, Python, and Perl - a mixture that seems to have moved beyond the
fossilized carbon stage. With heat and pressure, it has molded this
stack into a beautiful diamond. Linux
has grown from a group of tinkering hobbyists to a multibillion dollar industry. Apache
dominates the Web server market with an almost three times margin
over its closest competitor, IIS. MySQL
has over six million installs, and if you include PostgreSQL, its
Berkeley DB growth in open
source databases is growing like wildfire. This brings us to
PHP, Python, and Perl. If you add up the
click statistics based on Google searches,
these components of the lamp stack make up the largest percentage,
supplanting C as the language(s) with the
most hits. This also holds true for the most
programming jobs that have openings.

So with these facts in
hand, one has to come to the realization that the monopoly hold that
Microsoft once held, while still true for the desktop, is not the
case in any of these other arenas. In fact, one could make the
argument that Open Source is the most prevalent
development platform for the Web, which is becoming
the main working environment for most users. So with this case being
proposed, even though you may use a Microsoft product to access the
working environment or even to access the
Web, the actual processes that are being done to deliver the content or
the experience you have while on the Web, for the most part, has
nothing to do with Redmond.

Will we turn around
within a few years and see Bill Gates as the emperor
without his clothes? Rich beyond our wildest dreams, he buys into
his own marketing staff who say it is all beautiful - look! see how wonderful these robes are! as
he stands before us stark naked modeling his imaginary robes.

I am by no means
anti-Microsoft. I use many products that it has produced over the
years. It has made me a much more productive person with the
evolutions that it has helped to bring about. However, I have
spoken to people - including some at
Microsoft - who say that the marketing and salesman ratio has gotten
much too high. That there is too much hype
and all things must pass through the marketing sheen before being
blessed. Perhaps enough Scobleizing will
clear the air and uncle Bill will stop living in the past and wake up
to the new revolution in the software industry.

With the LAMP stack
becoming ever more prominent in the Internet arena, one would think
that a PHP# can’t be far from reality - let’s hope not. That track has
made some in-roads for Microsoft in the C, crowd but that would
be a bitter pill for the Open Source community to swallow should
Microsoft try to obfuscate an Open Source language. Microsoft has
taken a few forays into the Open Source realm with FlexWiki,
Windows Installer XML, and
Windows Template Library.

but perhaps the best
thing it could be doing is making it as easy as possible to utilize
a Microsoft platform with a very popular Open Source solution like, say, Apache.

I have run Apache and
IIS both at the same time on a Windows 2003 server and, after some
tweaking, I was able to get not only those two services to play nice, but to have a wiki and SharePoint running on the same box. It would
have been nice if I could have gone to to TechNet
and typed in a search for Apache and IIS and not had every single
result say “Migrate from Apache to IIS.” So I went to the
Open Source community and after seeing some flack posted about “Why
on Gods green earth you would want to do such a thing!” found
some helpful information to get my configuration working just fine.

One thing can be said for sure is that the LAMP is shining awfully bright these days.

[John Anthony Hartman]