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VMWARE | OPEN SOURCE PROGRAM OFFICE
BENTHOS
Written by
Christopher Franco Monterrosa
17 August 2021

It’s the summer of 2018, Christopher Franco Monterrosa makes his first debut in the heart of Silicon Valley. He joins vmware’s Open Source Program Offiice (OSPO) in the Office of the CTO as a UI Developer Intern.

It's the perfect followup from last summer's Software Engineering internship at Glassdoor - he gets to build an open source intelligence tool from scratch. We're talking about designing the database architecture, api endpoints, curating open source libraries, choosing the technical stack, designing the logo and coming up with the perfect name.

The man is bringing big startup energy into this summer.

With the intent of creating a tool to help encourage and empower VMware employees to contribute to third-party open source projects, he’s tasked with tracking the use and modifications of open source packages within vmware products and identifying individuals associated with those changes to ultimately identify opportunities to contribute upstream to those open source projects.

With the help of his mentor, a team of Open Source Engineers, and Leaders in the Open Source community he creates “Benthos”.

This story takes place throughout Christopher Franco Monterrosa’s internship, focusing on his Last Week.

It begins on Day 4.

EXT. PALO ALTO / VMWARE PARKING LOT - MORNING

CHRISTOPHER FRANCO MONTERROSA, is wearing his signature Billy London blue pinstripe coat. His ocean of curls are tied in a bun to reveal eye lashes that only nature sold to him exclusively. He dons his dark whiskey dragon eyeglasses along with his trusty brown sun kissed Zara shoes reprising their role once again as his go to footwear.

We're at the vmware parking lot, Franco is walking the concrete lines like a tightrope walker.

He takes out his phone, to start his daily ritual.

He opens up a video app and hits record, he starts spinning around and captures one of his intern apartmentmates in the background who looks like Ryan Gosling took on the role of a cryptographer.

FRANCO
DAYYYY....4!

He adds it to his story.

JUMP CUT:
INT. PALO ALTO / VMWARE OSPO HQ / FRANCO'S DESK - EVENING

ANGLE ON FRANCO - He's been gifted an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) sweater. We see the OSPO logo, he tips his head back, closes his eyes and holds the sweater close to his heart.

JUMP CUT:
INT. PALO ALTO / VMWARE OSPO HQ / FRANCO'S DESK - MORNING

From far away we see a design tool program on Franco's external monitor, we briefly see the words "Benthos" on it.

Franco's eyes are sparkling, we see him looking at a browser page opened through his laptop - it's an open source project that's perfect for the tech stack he's been piecing together.

An uncapped 0.4mm blue Pilot G-TC-C4 pen sits beside his Midori MD notebook — we see hand drawn database architecture designs. He's ready to build.

JUMP CUT:
INT. PALO ALTO / VMWARE / POSTER EVENT - NOON

We see dozens of interns from all over the company standing by their summer project posters.

ANGLE ON FRANCO - he's wearing his OSPO sweater.

While everyone's posters looks like phd research papers - his poster looks like it came straight out of an indie computer science zine with design illustrations made from scratch, with a pastel palette to match.

The information architecture of the poster is immaculate.

A crowd draws around him.

JUMP CUT:
EXT. PALO ALTO / VMWARE / OSPO HQ - MORNING

ANGLE ON FRANCO he's approaching the office building and almost forgets to do his ritual.

He takes out his phone, and opens up the video app and hits record

FRANCO
DAYYYY....61!

He keys into the office building.

JUMP CUT:
INT. VMWARE / OSPO HQ / EXPRESSO MACHINE - MORNING

It's early, no ones here. He has the expresso machine all to himself.

He loads up the portafilter, with fresh grounds of coffee, moving it in slow concentric circles - the distribution is even.

He tamps. The angle is perpendicular. The grounds are perfectly flat.

He loads up the portafilter onto the expresso machine.

We watch the expresso spout drip into a coffee mug. As expected the drip is smooth and evenly distributed.

He's holding the steam wand and gently placing the nozzle into the milk filled pitcher, he tilts it — he turns the nob.

WE HEAR EXPRESSO MACHINE STEAM

It's a smooth whirpool.

He pours the steamed milk into the coffee mug creating his small moment of latte art.

He closes his eyes and holds the mug close to his nose and gives it a good whiff.

INT. PALO ALTO / VMWARE / SMALL CONFERENCE ROOM - MORNING

It's the last week of the internship — the architecture has been laid out, all data sources confirmed, identified and tested — all he needs is to build.

Franco, is wearing his OSPO sweater, he's donning a set of noise-cancelling headphones.

We hear no music.

His hands are in the form a steeple.

Conference room lights are off, with Palo Alto sun rays nowhere in sight. Only the glow from his laptop screen illuminates his face.

He begins typing intensely into his text editor. No trackpad movements.

He's using vim keybindings in his text-editor.

His curser dances around the screen with minimal hand movement.

He types

:w

presses enter

He saves his work and brings up his terminal to run his code. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, reopens them.

One line of text makes an appearance on his terminal

The API call he just wrote is a success!

A FLASH of verbose text takes over the terminal screen.

He takes a quick glance. Hands slip off from the keyboard.

His forehead meets the conference room table.

He slowly lifts his head up and looks at his empty coffee mug. It's time for a break, he grabs it and heads to the expresso machine for another round.

INT. VMWARE / OSPO HQ / HALLWAY - MORNING

Walking down the hall he remembers talking to one of the open source engineers about a similar issue they ran into once. As Franco is walking down the hall, he sees the Open Source Engineer. He slowly walks up to an olympic stride and peeks over their cubicle

FRANCO
Goooooood moooorninnnng!!!!!!
JUMP CUT:
INT. VMWARE / OSPO HQ / CONFERENCE ROOM

Franco comes running into the conference room with a piece of printer paper.

It contains diagrams and words. It's the blueprint to a new architectural change.

He begins refactoring.

QUICK SHOTS:

Franco is intensely typing on his keyboard

we see several lines of code written and deleted

he takes an extended sip of coffee

Franco continues to intensely type on his keyboard

We see several lines of code being deleted

he takes a longer sip of coffee

Franco resumes his intense typing on his keyboard

we see several lines of code being written

he takes a sip of coffee and sets an empty mug down

he makes one final commit message on his terminal

FRANCO STOPS TYPING

He gives a deep, satisfying sigh. He switches over to his terminal.

He runs the program he's rearchitected for the third time on his homebrew themed terminal.

It's running.

We see text being displayed.

Long lines, short lines.

From a distance it looks like ASCII Art, in the form of the letter F.

He looks at the screen, he looks at the paper - the diagrams, the words.

His head tilts back up facing the ceiling, hands dropdown to the side.

he smiles and whispers

FRANCO
it works!