Due Diligence: Project Outlook

[ragel-ter-jj]

Hi OpenFeature Community,

Off the bat, let me say how stoked I was to find this project! Having this year learned that our integration with AWS Evidently would be no more after November, it was fabulous to find an open-specification that should enable us to be more flexible in future with provider changes.

We're currently neck-and-neck between two replacement providers and because of this, I proposed that we implement OpenFeature out of the gate so that we aren't implementing our chosen provider as a tightly-coupled platform dependency. I received a mostly warm reception, with the single concern being "what if OpenFeature stops being supported / maintained?". I know this is a pretty generic risk for any external dependency - open source or not - but in effort to provide some feedback to my team on the risks associated with taking on OpenFeature specifically, it would be great to get the following from community members:

CONTRIBUTORS / MAINTAINERS:

• How optimistic do you feel about the future of the project?
• What is the strategy for maintenance?
• Who do you think this project is NOT for in terms of intended users?

CONSUMERS / USERS:

• How widely are you depending on OpenFeature in your context? In multiple services and client applications? In select cases only? In parallel with other implementations?
• Is this a good tool for enterprise?
• What are your risk mitigation strategies for if the project is no longer maintained or supported?

Thanks so much to anyone that takes the time to respond! You are the sort of people that make the world better 🫶

[beeme1mr]

Hey @ragel-ter-jj, thanks for reaching out and for the great questions. I'll do my best to respond to each of your questions.

Q: How optimistic do you feel about the future of the project?
A: I'm bias, but I'm very optimistic about the future of the project. It's an incubating project in the CNCF, used by many companies from start-ups to enterprises, and has an active community.

Q: What is the strategy for maintenance?
A: We have maintainers for every SDK. There are a handful of full-time maintainers from various companies and others are volunteers. We also have a contributing ladder to promote active community members to have maintainer status.

Q: Who do you think this project is NOT for in terms of intended users?
A: OpenFeature is intended for every user/project. However, it may not be worth the additional complexity if your requirements are basic (e.g. a handful of static configuration options).

Q: How widely are you depending on OpenFeature in your context? In multiple services and client applications? In select cases only? In parallel with other implementations?
A: Many orgs use OpenFeature across their entire tech stack. You can (and should) use OpenFeature with a third-party vendor or open source project via an OpenFeature provider. It's recommended to only evaluate flags using the OpenFeature API.

Q: Is this a good tool for enterprise?
A: Yes, OpenFeature is great for enterprises. Many of the problems OpenFeature addresses like code-level vendor lock are amplified at a large enterprise. Here's a list of some folks that have added themselves as adopters.

Q: What are your risk mitigation strategies for if the project is no longer maintained or supported?
A: The goals is to maintain a long-term, healthily project. We aim to ensure that's the case by being a CNCF project, which means the project is owned by the CNCF, and not an individual person or company. It's also worth mentioning that feature flag vendors that support OpenFeature also have a commercial interest in the projects health.

Hope this helps!

[ragel-ter-jj]

Hey @beeme1mr

Thanks for what is a wonderfully clear set of answers.

I'm looking forward to digging into our internal POC implementation this week and sharing the results with my team, bolstered of course by this response and the equally positive indicator that is your rapid time-to-reply 🤯

I've joined the CNCF slack in the meantime and am excited to follow the project's development - perhaps even becoming a volunteer contributor in my own capacity once I'm more familiar with the specification.