Couldn't agree more with your point about bugs in CPAN modules becoming your problem. Excepting core modules, this happens a lot in my experience. I now have a growing personal collection of hacked and patched modules with fixes to significant bugs which have been reported but not yet fixed on CPAN, and that includes such well-respected examples as CGI::Session. CPAN's a great resource, you have to factor in the extra time it takes to evaluate, test, and possibly fix what you find there.