Hi, this bassam (one of the maintainers on crossplane). We describe the relationship in our arch doc here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1whncqdUeU2cATGEJhHvzXWC9.... The following snippet is from that doc:

The AWS Service Operator is a recent project that implements a set of Kubernetes controllers that are able to provision managed services in AWS. It defines a set of CRDs for managed services like DynamoDB, and controllers that can provision them via AWS CloudFormation. It is similar to Crossplane in that it can provision managed services in AWS. Crossplane goes a lot further by offering workload portability across cloud multiple cloud providers, separation of concern, and a scheduler for workload and resources.

This looks to work similarly to the Persistent Volumes in Kubernetes. To put it into OOP language Kubernetes persistent storage is modeled as an abstract class and a set of concrete types that implement a class.

The advantage of this model is that an application requests the "Large and Slow Disk Class" not knowing how it works on each environment and a cluster owner then describes how to configure a spinning disk EC2 Storage to fulfill this class.

So, the AWS Operator lets people use the Kubernetes APIs to configure AWS resources. But, if you use those APIs directly in say your Helm chart then your app won't be able to be configured and deployed on other cloud providers without editing those objects.

Is it important to your application to be loosely coupled to the cloud provider? Then you need this sort of abstraction to enable portability. It sort of continues the Kubernetes vision beyond computer/network/storage into other cloud services like databases/serverless/AI/etc.

The AWS operator targets AWS resources. You can't take them, in a general sense, to minikube, Azure, or elsewhere. It's declarative to AWS services.

Some would call the AWS operator as a form of vendor lock-in.

I think the idea here is about using services with portable apps across cloud provider.