AT&T is reaching out to St. Louis’ tech startup community with a new Open Source Lab.
The company is providing about $70,000 worth of servers, technology services and funding to create the lab, which will be located at the tech incubator T-REX in downtown St. Louis.
Jomo Castro, AT&T's regional director of external affairs, said it will allow for collaboration between startups, researchers and corporations.
“By creating an open source lab, we’re creating a safe place, a neutral space where developers from different companies can come together and collaborate on different projects,” Castro said.
The lab will help the startup tech community in St. Louis, but Castro said it will also benefit AT&T.
“The idea is we can present some code of a project we’re working on and it’s open to others to contribute to that code base,” he said. “So they can modify and add to it and are encouraged to add on to it.”
Patty Hagen, T-REX executive director, said the Open Source Lab will give entrepreneurs and researchers a chance to test their open source developments, which saves them money.
“They don’t have to rent cloud space on Amazon web services or other services. That’s very powerful to first step in technology development for these entrepreneurs and researchers,” she said.
Hagen said the lab could also provide training opportunities that will provide a pipeline for companies looking for employees experienced with both computer software and hardware.
The Open Source Lab is expected to be fully completed by the end of the year.
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