LAMP(software bundle)

The acronym LAMP (or L.A.M.P.) refers to a set of free software programs commonly used together to run dynamic Web sites or servers:

• Linux, the operating system;
• Apache, the Web server;
• MySQL, the database management system (or database server);
• Perl, PHP, Python, and/or Primate (mod mono), scripting/programming languages.

The acronym has three major uses:

1. Define a web server infrastructure
2. Define a programming paradigm of developing software
3. Define a software distribution package

To be precise, it is an open source Web platform.

Though the originators of these open source programs did not design them all to work specifically with each other, the combination has become popular because of its low acquisition cost and because of the ubiquity of its components (which come bundled with most current Linux distributions particularly as deployed by ISPs). When used in combination they represent a solution stack of technologies that support application servers. Other such stacks include unified application development environments such as Apple Computer's WebObjects, Java/Java EE, Grails, and Microsoft's .NET architecture.

The scripting component of the LAMP stack has its origins in the CGI web interfaces that became popular in the early 1990s. This technology allows the user of a web browser to execute a program on the web server, and to thereby receive dynamic as well as static content. Programmers used scripting languages with these programs because of their ability to manipulate text streams easily and efficiently, even when they originate from disparate sources. For this reason system designers often referred to such scripting systems as glue languages.

Michael Kunze coined the acronym LAMP in an article for the German computing magazine c't in 1998 (12/98, page 230). The article aimed to show that a bundle of free software could provide a viable alternative to commercial packages. Knowing about the IT-world's love of acronyms, Kunze came up with LAMP as a marketing-like term to popularize the use of free software. O'Reilly and MySQL AB have popularized the term among English-speakers. Indeed, MySQL AB has since based some of its marketing efforts on the popularity of the LAMP stack.