Why would anyone want no rules? what is the point of an empty RuleSet?

The main purpose of this RuleSet is to allow the individual enabling of rules

Create a new file (something like custom-rules.yaml) and add the following YAML to it:

extends: [[spectral:oas, off]]

This creates a ruleset that extends ‘no’ rules. You can find this ruleset in the rulesets/examples directory, and it’s named norules-ruleset.yaml

Now you can enable rules individually:

extends: [[spectral:oas, off]]
rules:
  operation-operationId: true
  description-duplication: true

Now you can run any vacuum command that supports a ruleset.

vacuum lint -r custom-rules.yaml my-openapi-spec.yaml

There is a specific-ruleset available as an example.

What about disabling specific rules?

From version v0.0.54+ you can disable rules by using false. As requested here, the feature allows you to disable rules in an existing ruleset (like the recommended/default one) without having to create a new ruleset.

The example below explains how to disable two of the rules in the recommended ruleset.

extends: [[spectral:oas, recommended]]
rules:
  operation-operationId: false
  description-duplication: false