Not very helpful.
Many people have started their own pool from scratch by asking around on this forum - that's what a forum is for - getting help. Nobody knows anything until they ask, that's how knowledge is obtained. I suggest you keep asking around the forums, amongst the nay-sayers you will get some very good advice - good luck.
I would beg to differ - a vast majority of pool operators are simply doing their own offshoot version of the p2pool api.
Maybe if you're including "p2pools", but most actual pools are running custom frontends, not counting the huge number of abandoned/insignificantly small pools which are running the open source pushpool frontend from late 2011.
agreed
Simplecoin or mmfce are opensource front ends, stratum is a solid back end although pushpool still works with most alt coins.
you just got more help to set up your pool than I did with mine
don't expect to "set and forget" a pool - it is a 24/7 job if you want to do it well
and you or your mate had better be really good at securing websites, attacks and hacking attempts are just about daily occurences for pools
