Giants, Standing on the Shoulders Of - Maintaining Open Source at Scale

Explore the realities of maintaining one of the world's most widely-used open source projects in this 13-minute keynote presentation by Daniel Stenberg, founder and lead developer of the Curl Project. Gain insights into the challenges facing open source maintainers in 2025, including funding shortages, sustainability concerns, AI-generated noise, and compliance pressures from industry giants. Learn about the journey of running curl, an almost 30-year-old open source project that has been installed in over 20 billion instances, and discover what it truly takes to keep open source software sustainable for the long term. Understand how modern software's unprecedented dependence on open source creates both opportunities and obstacles, while getting a candid perspective on the evolving landscape of open source development and maintenance from one of its most experienced practitioners.