Apache Hive is a data warehouse system built on Hadoop that lets analysts query large, distributed data sets with SQL. The project describes it as a distributed, fault-tolerant data warehouse system for analytics at scale. It is delivered as open-source software that organisations install and run on their own infrastructure, which makes it an option for those who want to operate a warehouse themselves instead of using managed services such as Amazon Athena or Amazon Redshift.
Apache Hive is developed by the Apache Software Foundation, a U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable organisation, and is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Because the project has no commercial owner or foreign parent company, the ownership question that applies to vendor-hosted products does not arise for the code. The data a Hive deployment processes stays wherever the organisation runs it, so a European organisation can keep its warehouse and data within the EU. Hive services sold by commercial vendors come from separate companies whose ownership and hosting terms need to be assessed individually.