The OSS Advantage

Or: What, you actually thought you'd escape proselytizing?

PHP, MySQL, and Apache, unlike their Microsoft counterparts, are Open Source Software. This means a number of things:

1. They're free (as in beer). Free is always good.
2. The source code is available with the program. That means that if you, the end user, want to tinker with the program, you can. Think of it like car customization. Not many people do it, but it's pretty freakin' cool when they do. You can only customize closed-source software as far as the vendor lets you. It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut.
3. Intellectual property laws apply differently to OSS. To wit, you don't actually own that copy of Windows; you're just borrowing it. But your copy of Apache is yours yours yours.

Plus, they're also far more stable than anything Microsoft has ever made or will ever make, for reasons that Dr. Bill McClung would be happy to expound upon.

And, if that wasn't reason enough, they're also more common and more supported. Apache has been the single most common web server since 1994 -- the birth of the web -- and holds around 65% market share.

Finally, PHP, MySQL, and Apache are all enormously powerful applications, far more powerful than you'll ever need them to be. Apache serves thousands of major corporate websites -- including monsters like Google -- and MySQL is truly an enterprise-class database system.

But these are not difficult applications to learn. Often, power comes at the expense of usability, but all three of these applications are easy to install, easy to configure, easy to learn, and easy to use. To find something easier, you have to take a significant loss of power: Filemaker Pro, the Nerf ball of the database world, is easier than MySQL in many respects (although point-and-drool interfaces for MySQL are becoming more common, especially the highly popular phpMyAdmin, written in -- you guessed it -- PHP); Microsoft's Personal Web Server, which used to ship with Windows Power Tools, is about as powerful as my pink-haired old gramma when she's had too many Valium; and server-side scripting languages are all about as easy as PHP (although some, like the very powerful Perl and the snail-paced and wimpy JSP, are notably more difficult). In short, you get tons of power without sacrificing usability. Everyone wins!

Convinced? Let's learn some MySQL!