OpenSearch Foundation: AWS Contribution Share Drops to 72%, Self-Managed Deployments Rise to 60%
Data from the OpenSearch Software Foundation shows AWS's share of code contributions fell from 91% to 72%, while user self-managed deployments rose to 60%, indicating growing independence from a single vendor.
Bianca Lewis, Executive Director of the OpenSearch Software Foundation, told The New Stack that the project's governance structure has undergone substantive changes since AWS donated OpenSearch to the Linux Foundation in September 2024. Latest data reveals that AWS's share of contribution activities across OpenSearch repositories has dropped from 91% in the first year to 72% in 2025–26. Meanwhile, the proportion of maintainers affiliated with Amazon in the core repository has decreased from 95% in April 2022 to 71% today.
This shift reflects enterprise demand for vendor neutrality. According to the "2026 Open Data Infrastructure Report" published by the Linux Foundation and the OpenSearch Software Foundation, self-managed cloud deployments have grown faster than Amazon's managed OpenSearch Service since 2024. Currently, 60% of surveyed OpenSearch users run self-managed deployments in the cloud, up significantly from 37% in 2024, while usage of Amazon's managed service rose more modestly from 44% to 48%.
Although AWS still accounts for nearly three-quarters of code contributions and holds four of the 15 voting seats on the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), with AWS employee Andrew Ross re-elected as committee chair in October, Lewis argues that legal independence is the foundation for building trust. "When they donated it to the Linux Foundation, that was a watershed moment," Lewis said. "Because they couldn't close OpenSearch and they couldn't change the license. They didn't own the application anymore."
OpenSearch is positioning itself as a central component of enterprise AI infrastructure, particularly for applications like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Its latest release, OpenSearch 3.9, enhances vector and hybrid search capabilities to help developers retrieve information for AI applications. However, the report notes that 24% of non-adopters remain hesitant due to concerns about the project's historical ties to AWS.