I think home-rolling is almost always the answer, unless: - The IRL subject matter is distinct from your core business, programmatically distinct from your cor

I think home-rolling is almost always the answer, unless: - The IRL subject matter is distinct from your core business, programmatically distinct from your core in-house software, and generally the same across businesses (accounting, HR, etc.); or - The product is open standard or otherwise highly interoperable, and has a permissive license (e.g., zlib, sqlite); or - The product is highly complex and hard to get right (e.g., encryption, etc.). In cases affecting your core product, with expensive licenses, and it's pretty easy to get it right, owning the software/platform outright clearly wins over incurring massive perpetual overhead just to make devs' lives possibly easier.