As open-source technologies continue to infiltrate the enterprise, The OpenStack Foundation also continues to make its presence known, especially as the maturing platform looks to re-establish its market position. The meeting of users, developers, enterprises and anyone interested in open-source technologies at the foundation’s annual OpenStack Summit extends an opportunity to network together and expand the collective knowledge base.

“Getting [open-source] communities together, in person; those high bandwidth interactions are critical to getting work done and making things happen,” said Jonathan Bryce (pictured, left), executive director of The OpenStack Foundation.

Bryce, along with  Mark Collier (pictured, right), chief operating officer of The OpenStack Foundation, spoke to host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host John Troyer (@jtroyer) of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during OpenStack Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed the changing face of enterprises using OpenStack, as well as how they got controversial figure Edward Snowden to join one of the keynote addresses. (*Disclosure below.)

Open-source: freedom of choice, freedom of speech

In the early days of OpenStack, “We had a lot of startups and a lot of activity, but the market didn’t know how to consume it, didn’t understand what it was,” Bryce said. That originally scared off many companies, but now they have learned to trust open-source.

Thanks to the increasing maturation of OpenStack, it now covers a broader set of industries than ever before, he stated. Two of the use cases, whose representatives spoke at the summit, included General Electric and the U.S. Army Cyber School.

Regarding Edward Snowden speaking at the summit via video uplink, Collier explained that when the original leak story came out, no one knew who was responsible. Once the press announced the name, Collier registered the ‘edward.snowden.com’ domain, figuring that it might come in handy one day.

After Snowden went to Russia and started putting together a legal defense, his team wanted to use that site. So they called Collier; he told them he’d hand over the site for free, but he did hint that if they could get Snowden to talk at an OpenStack Summit, that would be great. After that, it was a matter of getting calendars in alignment. This year was the first summit that worked for Snowden.

“[Snowden is] obviously an open-source person; he has a lot of passion behind this,” Collier said. He knew it would be interesting and applicable to the summit audience.

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. (* Disclosure: The OpenStack Foundation sponsors some OpenStack Summit segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither The OpenStack Foundation nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE