There's another way to look at it.

Is the Open Source community stagnant or lagging behind what's coming out of Microsoft? Will using .NET give you a competitive advantage because you can use a new technology sooner? Is the Open Source community truely innovating? Is Microsoft for that matter?

There is no right or wrong answer because it will be different for each person. But, just something to think about.

>I know... all we need is yet another thread on this topic.... but I must :)
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>Does it seem to anyone else that the open source languages are actually more consistent than .Net?
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>.NET has been through what, 4 or 5 data access methodologies now (ADO, LINQ, Entity, etc.)? WinForms gave way to WebForms which was supposed to give way to SilverLight but now SilverLight is the domain of WP7, not the future of desktop apps. Sorry guys. Classic ASP gives way to asp.net with MVC but then the MSFT implementation of MVC is shite so we go with MVVM or maybe now MVCVVMCMVM? If you were using open source DLR projects like IronRuby or IronPython you have been defunded. Sorry. What, you want to be productive in the IDE? Then go out and purchase CodeComplete and TestDriven and Reflector and blahblah.
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>Sure the Fox can be a bit challenging in certain areas (multi-threading sticks out for sure) but I'll be damned if I can ever see being as productive in .NET for simple desktop apps as I am with the Fox. Being a small shop, .Net solves problems I don't have. When VFP stops paying the bills I'm looking to Python or Ruby. Those languages look so damn lean and sexy and exciting!
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>That is all. Thank you for reading.