coldfusion alternative

[Glenn McCalley]

OK so a good customer of long standing wants a coldfusion website.
Some "developer", the husband of one of his staff (so that makes him a
trusted advisor, right?), has convinced him "it's the only way to do it".
My position is maybe that's the only way -he- can do it but there's a whole
wide world of alternatives out there.

Looking at it, he wants to collect some data on an input form, then hash it
over a couple of ways and present the results.  Pretty graphics maybe as
well.  Looks to me like Perl... don't even need a real database, heck
DB_File would work just fine for this.
OK with me...
...but what's the argument to present other than "you don't need
coldfusion"?

I'd even put CF on the system and be done with it if there was a FreeBSD
version (anyone have any luck with that?).  Tracked down BlueDragon but
that's apparently Win only as well.

Ammunition wanted.
Thanks
Glenn.