Univer

Welcome to a new edition of Open Pioneers - your weekly update from the forefront of open source. Today, we talk about:

• Univer: An open source alternative to Google Sheets, Slides, and Docs

• New open source projects, including:

  • Secret LLama: Fully private LLM chatbot

  • GitHub Portfolio: Portfolio Website using your GitHub username

• German public broadcasters announce open source streaming OS

• And more open source content

Since last week, we have welcomed 34 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🔍 Univer: An open source alternative to Google Sheets, Slides, and Docs

Univer is building the open source office suite that aims to break application silos and connect business data across different platforms into a single unified interface. The three products Univer Sheets, Univer Docs, and Univer Slides are an open source alternative to the respective Google workspace products.

A few highlights from their repository:

• Univer is designed to support both spreadsheets and documents. Slides will be supported as well in the future.

• Univer is easily embeddable, allowing seamless integration into your applications.

• Univer is highly extensible, thanks to its plug-in architecture and Facade API that makes it a delight for developers to implement their unique requirements on the top of Univer.

• Univer is highly customizable, allowing you to personalize its appearance using themes. It also provides support for internationalization (i18n).

The project is still being actively developed on GitHub, but I recommend to check it out nevertheless.

🔥 New open source projects started last week

📺 German public broadcasters announce open source streaming OS

Germany's public broadcasters ARD and ZDF announced that they are collaborating to develop an open-source streaming operating system (OS) for smart TVs and streaming devices. This joint initiative aims to provide an alternative to proprietary platforms like Google's Android TV and reduce their reliance on big tech companies.

The open source streaming OS will enable ARD and ZDF to have more control over the user experience, data privacy, and content distribution on connected TVs and streaming devices. By leveraging open standards and technologies, they can create a more flexible and customizable platform tailored to their needs and those of their viewers. 

I believe this is a great move! All publicly funded software should be made open source - as long as they are no good reasons not to (e.g. security concerns).

Learn more about the initiative here.

📚 More open source content

• Open source cybersecurity is a ticking time bomb Link

• Red Hat outlines a vision for evolving AI models with open-source communities Link

• The Value of DevRel and Contributing to Open Source Initiatives Link

• Google lays off staff from Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its developer conference Link

• Microsoft Releases New-Open Source Tool for OT Security Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)