In this edition of the OpenFeature Contributor Spotlight, we’re excited to highlight Max VelDink, a dedicated developer whose work has played a pivotal role in advancing the OpenFeature Ruby SDK. Max has contributed significant improvements to the OpenFeature project, and his efforts have helped expand the representation of Ruby in the cloud-native space.

How Max Got Involved with OpenFeature

Max’s journey with OpenFeature began around a year ago while working at Justworks, where his team was re-evaluating their flagging strategy. He noticed that the Ruby SDK existed and had the basics of flag evaluation implemented but was not yet released or highlighted on the website.

“At Justworks, I wrote our implementation to get us going, but I started to upstream many of our learnings into the Ruby SDK. We dropped support for our internal implementation last month and are now entirely on the main SDK,” Max explains.

Motivation to Contribute

Max is passionate about increasing Ruby’s presence within Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects, where he feels it doesn’t get as much attention as other languages. As he puts it, “Ruby is largely underrepresented in many CNCF projects; the Ruby community tends to have its own handful of competing libraries but doesn’t interact externally as much as other languages like Golang and Java.”

Beyond his focus on Ruby, Max also feels a strong sense of responsibility to give back to the open-source community. “I owe a great deal to the open-source community and feel like OpenFeature is an excellent project to give back on, as the implementation is straightforward, and I actively use it at Justworks,” he says.

Key Contributions

Max’s key contributions to the OpenFeature project have focused primarily on the Ruby SDK. Some of his major achievements include:

• Reviving the dormant Ruby SDK project and getting it to a releasable state, which led to it being officially listed on the OpenFeature.dev website
• Implementing the InMemoryProvider utility in the Ruby contrib project
• Contributing to the MetaProvider in the Ruby contrib project, including working on the specification language for it

These contributions have greatly improved the usability and functionality of the Ruby SDK, helping it gain more traction within the OpenFeature ecosystem.

Most Rewarding Experience

For Max, one of the most fulfilling moments in his OpenFeature contributor journey was seeing the Ruby SDK officially listed on the OpenFeature website. As he reflects, “Definitely getting the Ruby SDK listed on the website was a big milestone.”

What made this achievement even more meaningful for Max was that it marked his debut in large-scale open-source contributions. “It was my first time participating in a large open-source project, and that was very rewarding,” he shares, emphasizing the impact of his work on the broader OpenFeature community.

Advice for Newcomers

When offering advice to newcomers, Max suggests starting with the foundation. “Start with the basics in the specification!” he advises, noting that, “Unlike other standards and specs around the web, OpenFeature is very straightforward and digestible, and you can read the whole thing in less than an hour.”

Max encourages new contributors to explore whether their primary language is represented or if the vendor they use has a provider. Once you find something that sparks your interest, his advice is simple: “Just start coding!”

He adds that contributors shouldn’t hesitate to ask for support, because “the OpenFeature community is very friendly, and welcomes all questions on Slack or GitHub.”

Thank You, Max!

We’re grateful for Max’s dedication and contributions to the OpenFeature project. His work has had a significant impact, and we look forward to seeing how he continues to shape the future of feature flagging standards.