The policy exists to enable collaboration and contribution, not to restrict it. These types of policies are common at companies like Amazon. Google has posted theirs publicly [1], and Amazon policies are similar. I have used the policy to contribute to more than one "upstream" open source software package, for example the Xen hypervisor [2].
Though I wish I had more recent commits, this should demonstrate that even in 2012 patches were flowing to Xen. More work on Xen by others can be found by searching for "amazon.co" in the commits [3].
[1] https://opensource.google/docs/
[2] http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=xen.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=...
[3] http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=xen.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=...
Letting the status quo continue would just ensure that Amazon gets even richer off the hard work done by Elastic while development dries up. We all lose while they suck profit out of this product.
It's not like they require elastic to survive. They're too big to fail. By being a dominant cloud provider they have a massive inbuilt advantage
Yes they are different to other cloud providers. They're big enough to throw their weight around and they do.