I've never been very comfortable with third-party components – mostly for the typical ego-driven reasons, e.g., they don't do things exactly how I would do them, etc. However, I've had enough trouble with third-party components that I feel some of my hesitance is justifiable. In fact, I'm ready to give up on “closed source” third-party components altogether, primarily because fixing critical bugs or adding missing features can be difficult (you have to convince the company that the change needs to be made, and then you have to wait for them to make the change, and test the change, and hope that they didn't break something else) or impossible (the company is no longer actively developing that product, or the company is no longer in business).

In the future, I'll be looking for component vendors that provide source code to their customers; Dan Appleman makes a good argument for this. Not only is this the “ultimate security blanket,” but seeing out how the component works is often quite useful when you're trying to use a component. Furthermore, when something breaks, and you're trying to figure out if it is your fault or that of the component, being able to debug their source code can be invaluable.