Party Crasher (Forbes.com) Forbes.com - Not long ago most corporate computer managers viewed open-source programs like MySQL as toys fit only for hobbyists. But then Linux, an open-source operating system, became a smash hit in corporate sites. Now the folks who embraced Linux are snapping up other bargain programs such as Apache, which serves up Web pages, the MySQL database and scripting languages like PHP, Perl and Python, which are used to create Web pages. So many companies use the combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (or Perl or Python) that they're described with the acronym LAMP.