In Entrepreneur.com, Rahul Varshneya observes that a technology stack is often chosen by your same software or firmware developer who will be responsible for writing code in that stack’s programming language.

Who would be brave or foolish enough to recommend themselves out of a job by choosing a stack which requires expertise in a language they do not understand? Mr. Varshneya warns you to use an evaluator unbiased towards programming language.

This is because the programming language should only be one of the criteria when choosing a technology stack. However, even if an unbiased evaluator chooses a stack that meets the current and future technical needs of your company and uses the correct programming language, they can still make a wrong choice if the technology stack supplier is not right for your company.

Often evaluators choose a technology stack containing non-commercial software components that have been developed by open source authors. The additional challenge is to choose these open source “suppliers” based on your non-functional requirements.

Does your evaluator consider the security vulnerabilities that have been disclosed for each component of the stack they choose? Do they know if anyone is working on that open source component? Even if enough people are working on the open source component, how active are they? Are they making fixes, making scalability improvements, and plugging security and data privacy holes that you would expect from your own developers, or are they only adding fun-to-develop features?

Make sure you and your evaluator choose your open source technology stack suppliers based on all the same criteria you would apply if you were to hire an employee or outsourcer to develop those components for you.