spec VS ld-find-code-refs

Less Vendor Lock-in: Open source means less vendor lock-in by nature. Many open source feature flag solutions are also partnered with OpenFeature to promote open standards, community, and less lock-in at the code level.

Instead of returning a static value, the code above uses OpenFeature and the Flagd provider (feature flag backend) to retrieve flag values (we will see how flagd reads the JSON file soon). If the feature flag system is offline or unavailable for whatever reason, a safe fallback value of #FFFFFF is returned.

Open-source & standardise interfaces - DevCycle tries to make every piece of software that their clients install open source. With CNCF, they are leading a project called OpenFeature - a vendor-agnostic interface for feature flagging.

The trend in feature flag implementation is to standardize with solutions like OpenFeature that provide SDKs and templates to streamline the process. Standardization is beneficial for 2 reasons:

For those that dont know about the project, check out Open Feature https://openfeature.dev/ which is sort of like Open Telemetry but for feature flags. Helps avoid vendor lock in. We're a young project and looking for help and to build the community!

What is the OpenFeature Standard?

Shameless plug here for openfeature - a CNCF standard for managing and implementing feature flags: https://openfeature.dev/

Taplytics is a broad A/B testing platform for marketing teams. While DevCycle is a feature flagging tool built for developers. Taplytics actually has feature flagging, but DevCycle is much more focused and plans to compete directly with incumbents like LaunchDarkly by building a better developer experience (more on how later). But with Taplytics they built so many features and every customer was using them in a different way that it became hard for such a small team to maintain. Meanwhile, feature flagging is a much narrower problem where most customers will have similar use cases. In addition, Taplytics required lots of face-to-face time selling to executives, while DevCycle is more of a bottoms-up, self-serve sales process. Finally, we didn't cover it in the interview but feature flagging is a huge market. LaunchDarkly was valued at $3billion in 2021.

I had a custom rule added to Little Snitch that blocked the following domains: launchdarkly.com, clientstream.launchdarkly.com, mobile.launchdarkly.com

10. LaunchDarkly

There are however Saas to implement directly a feature management system. Several solutions exist like LaunchDarkly, Flagsmith or Unleash.io. Using a SaaS (Software as a Service) feature flagging solution offers the advantage of a faster and more straightforward implementation process. These services are readily available and can be quickly integrated into your project.

Currently, there are numerous feature flag systems available. Options include our own company's open-source system, "Bucketeer", and the renowned SaaS "LaunchDarkly" among others. When comparing these, the following considerations might come into play:

A variety of tools can cover some of these use cases. PLG tools like Segment and journy.io can track activity. Maybe you use a feature flag service such as LaunchDarkly. Stripe or Chargebee might manage some of the billing-related aspects. Meanwhile, problems related to authentication might be visible in your Auth0 account. However, it’s unlikely that you’re using all these platforms. Even if you are, you probably can’t cover some use cases.

If you have not used it and wonder what I am talking about: https://launchdarkly.com/.