For years, the business-software development world has been split largely between Microsoft's .Net toolset and Java. Now it Get ready for a third option. The so-called LAMP stack of open-source software--which includes the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database and scripting languages PHP, Perl or Python--is pushing its way into mainstream corporate computing.

The LAMP has become a more viable alternative to Microsoft's .Net development software and Java. LAMP's emergence has been fueled by a growing third-party industry and by corporate customers' interest in open source.

The efforts of companies like us making LAMP more industrial strength--combined with growing interest among corporate customers in open source--are making LAMP a more cohesive and competitive offering to Microsoft's .Net and Java products.

The organizing structure behind the LAMP software is very different from the more established stacks of .Net and J2EE.

Microsoft builds .Net and all Windows-related management tooling. Java software, meanwhile, is developed through the formal Java standards organization, where many additions are submitted by large vendors, such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and BEA.

By contrast, there is no central body overseeing the LAMP software. As a result, the combination of tools is not specifically designed to work together, although open-source components tend to stick to industry standards.

This "self-organizing" aspect of the LAMP marketplace prevents customers from getting "locked into" a specific vendor, according to LAMP vendors.

 

Microsoft has lined up a set of products, including low-end Web and database tools, as well as a Web server more competitive to Apache's, to fend off incursions from LAMP.

IBM and Oracle have partnered with Zend to make their respective databases work better with PHP programming tools. Java vendors, including Sun, are making changes to the standard Java virtual machine and NetBeans development tool to work with scripting languages Jython or Groovy.

The LAMP stack is still not an officially sanctioned application platform in many companies. But the open-source development model, where individuals can make contributions to freely available products, will put the LAMP stack on a quicker development pace than those of Java or .Net, predicts MySQL's Mickos.