A key message during OpenStack Summit’s day two keynote was one of freedom of choice: choice in technologies and selections within those choices.

“I did like the message that OpenStack was composed of different projects, that it is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle,” said John Troyer (@jtroyer) (pictured, left), guest host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio.

Troyer said he especially liked the demo where 15 “from scratch” OpenStack clouds were spun-up live and then joined in a database cluster. This shows how a hybrid, multi-cloud world “actually works in reality,” according to Stu Miniman (@stu) (pictured, right), Troyer’s cohost.

Flexibility and ease of use in open-source were the main topics of discussion during theCUBE’s kickoff segment on day two of OpenStack Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. Troyer and Miniman also discussed a powerful message from controversial figure and unauthorized leaker of classified material Edward Snowden — computer expert, former Central Intelligence Agency employee, and former contractor for the United States government — around how open source can help keep the internet free.

The power of open source

While OpenStack, an open-source cloud operating system, is not monolithic, there was an impression during the keynote that this message had not been disseminated to the community as much as OpenStack would like.

“There’s been a recent emphasis on helping users realize that they can take individual components of OpenStack, such as Cinder or Swift, and run them in, for example, AWS,” Miniman said.

Regarding the power of open-source technologies, Edward Snowden was live during the kickoff via satellite.

“Fear is the most powerful weapon in the world today,” especially the combination of information technology and fear, Snowden said during the keynote. He added that when organizations enable open-source technologies, using a multitude of services and clouds, this can actually serve as a lever against the over-centralization of commercial forces by companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, and which are for the most part outside of people’s control.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of OpenStack Summit 2017 Boston.

Photo: SiliconANGLE