In my job as a developer, I get to talk to all sorts of people. And one of the conversations I seem to have a lot lately is "build vs buy", especially when it comes to custom applications. When developing a new application, I try not to reinvent the wheel, for example, if the application requires extensive charting capabilities, I will look for a third-party charting component to buy and integrate. If the application requires a more polished user-interface, I will buy a set of icons or a UI component to deliver the required user interface.
