Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Chronicle Of A Startup: Microsoft Or Open Source?

The biggest choice I face in launching my Web 2.0 site is that of underlying technology platform. So I'm throwing the question open: Should I go with a Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) software stack or open source?

I'm truly agnostic on this decision, but I'll say up front that I'm leaning toward Microsoft, mainly because I'm guessing that it will be easier to find qualified programming help. I'm not a technician, and I don't have a budget to hire one. Since the programming work will be outsourced to freelancers, I'm guessing that it will be easier to find Visual Studio/Silverlight programmers than PHP or Ruby on Rails help. But that's merely a hunch; I haven't researched it.

I bounced my idea off Toli Kuznets, co-founder and CTO of Marketcetera, a startup that I recently profiled in InformationWeek. Marketcetera is a commercial open source company, so Toli is obviously biased toward open source. If I were based in San Francisco, this would be a no-brainer -- the vast majority of Bay Area Web startups are working with the open source LAMP stack, he says. In New York, where I live, that's not necessarily true.

Read More Article...

No comments: