This was the title of my keynote at the Open Source Summit Europe 2025 conference in Amsterdam that I delivered on August 25, 2025.

The giants, as in fact large parts of modern infrastructure, stand on the shoulders of Open Source projects and their maintainers. But maybe these projects and people are not treated in optimal ways.

The slides are available.

My slot allowed me 15 minutes and I completed my presentation with around two minutes left. I have rarely received so many positive comments as after this talk.

Credits

The painting in the top image, The Colossus (also known as The Giant), is traditionally attributed to Francisco de Goya but might actually have been made by his friend Asensio Juliá.