Commercial software giants such as Oracle and IBM are moving deeper into the open source community by snapping up the startups built to provide services around the free software, a trend that means corporate buyers should think carefully about future projects before making deployment decisions, experts say.

Though arguably in its early stages, the trend is accelerating. Recently Oracle announced it would buy open source database vendor Sleepycat Software, and rumors continue to swirl about its interest in JBoss, one of the leading open source application server firms.

Last year IBM bought open source infrastructure company Gluecode Software, and Check Point Software is finalizing its purchase of Snort-creator Sourcefire, announced last fall. At the same time, commercial vendors are beginning to offer versions of their proprietary products for free and are contributing proprietary code into the open source community, lending credence to the idea of making money from services and support around community-developed software.

Still, there are concerns as commercial vendors ingest the companies that were the first to make this business model work. At risk is the loss of user access to key application development personnel -- a hallmark of open source projects -- and the potential departure of critical project stewards.

“I believe what will really determine the success or failure of commercial firms purchasing open source vendors is the extent to which they can keep the key developers,” says Barry Strasnick, CIO at CitiStreet, a benefits management company based in Quincy, Mass. “One of the main reasons that CitiStreet likes to deal with vendors such as JBoss is that our senior technical staff can deal with their technical staff, instead of having to deal with useless layers in between,” he sys. “We don't buy software because of fancy brochures or well-dressed sales staff. We buy software to gain benefit from great programmers.”

Another concern with commercial vendors acquiring open source companies is the possibility that the software could be applied to enhance proprietary products.

“The question that customers need to pay attention to is what is going to happen to the code that was open source,” says Bob Igou, a research director at Gartner. “Does it remain open source? Is the acquiring company going to make sure it’s even better tested and quality assured and provide services around it? Or are they worst case going to cannibalize it and integrate it into something else they’re doing and in a sense the open source product goes away?”