Devs gotta eat. Yeah the code is out there but the code is a result of a lot of thinking, prioritization, research into what is needed from the actual product. So now AWS owns that mindshare and talent and will (probably heavily) influence its decisions. I just hope DuckDB doesn't stray from its goal of being the SQLite (e.g. embedded) OLAP.

It can go different ways. Redis, Elastic Search, MySQL, and Java all have different stories with some common threads.

Complete control over what gets merged and worked on by the core team.