It's not about whether it would have thrived without AWS, it's about 1) Would it have thrived at all under a more restrictive license that could have reduced ad

It's not about whether it would have thrived without AWS, it's about 1) Would it have thrived at all under a more restrictive license that could have reduced adoption; 2) During it's old license, did it thrive more than it would have without AWS adoption. Counterfactuals like this are difficult to answer. However, more permissively licensed software does seem to reach widespread adoption more easily. Elastic's download rates seem to have approached hockey stick growth trend around the time of AWS adoption, and Elastic's revenue significantly increased afterwards as well. It might have been on track for that anyway, but 5 years of linear growth did turn sharply upwards around AWS. It seems like Elastic as a company has a decent probability of faster growth and more revenue due to market penetration and name recognition assisted by AWS usage. Had Elastic been restrictive.from the start, it's entirely possible that the industry would have focussed on and driven improvements in something like solr instead. As you said, elastic solved problems people had, it's not unreasonable to think they would have solved them some other way without elastic.