AWS has open sourced Elasticsearch, creating Open Distro for Elasticsearch, with the intention of fork-ing the community, according to Paul Dix. The motivations behind this move are tainted by AWS's clear commercial ambitions, which will favor one vendor over another. This move is similar to Microsoft giving away Internet Explorer in the 90s and claiming it was for user benefit, but was actually a monopolistic strategy. The implications for Elastic and its community, as well as other open source vendors, are significant, including potential fragmentation of the community and uncertainty for developers building their careers on these tools. Ultimately, this move may boost fundraising prospects for commercial players with source available licenses, but also highlights the need for clear distinctions between open and closed-source projects.