Open-source software has given cloud providers a way to adopt popular technologies without having to own the companies behind them. AWS, however, has decided that simply using DuckDB in its products and services is not enough.

The cloud provider on Wednesday said that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based company behind the development of the DuckDB ecosystem, while leaving the DuckDB open-source project under the independent DuckDB Foundation.

That means the approximately 30-member team at DuckLabs will join AWS once the acquisition closes, while DuckDB and related products will remain available under the permissive MIT license, leaving developers and enterprises free to continue using the database as before.

However, AWS hasn’t made clear what it hopes to gain by bringing the team and its expertise in-house, or how that knowledge could eventually influence the development of new or existing data and analytics services, potentially shaping the technologies and platforms that developers build on and CIOs deploy.

AWS could put DuckDB at the heart of its data stack