PANEL: OpenTelemetry Technical Committee Panel - Josh Suereth, Reiley Yang, Rynn Mancuso, Jack Berg

Summary

The OpenTelemetry Technical Committee panel, led by Ren Manuso, discusses the members' journeys and goals for the project. Jack Berg from New Relic focuses on configuration improvements, Lilla from Microsoft emphasizes semantic conventions, and Riley Yang of Microsoft aims to enhance the Matrix API SDK. Josh Seret from Google Cloud highlights the importance of community involvement and the Entity SIG's work on resource detection. The panel addresses balancing developer experience across languages and the project's growth, emphasizing community empowerment and the evolution of OpenTelemetry.

Takeaways

• 😀 The OpenTelemetry Technical Committee (TC) consists of diverse members with different backgrounds and areas of expertise, all contributing to the project's growth and development.
• 🔧 Jack Berg, a maintainer for OpenTelemetry Java, aims to stabilize the log signal and metrics, and is currently working on file-based configuration for OpenTelemetry to improve expressiveness and ease of use.
• 🎤 Lilla, from Microsoft, has been involved in observability since 2016, focusing on library instrumentations and messaging scenarios, and is excited about semantic conventions and their role in standardizing data collection practices.
• 🛠️ Riley Yang, who has been with OpenTelemetry since its inception, is focused on the Matrix API SDK specification and improving the reliability and performance of OpenTelemetry for large-scale enterprise applications.
• 🤔 Josh Seret from Google Cloud emphasizes the importance of community involvement and the role of the TC in facilitating and supporting community-led projects and initiatives.
• 🔄 OpenTelemetry's development process requires prototypes in different languages to ensure a wide range of feedback and to avoid language-specific idioms in its specifications.
• 👥 The TC plays a crucial role in reviewing and stabilizing specifications, ensuring consistency across languages, and resolving conflicts when necessary.
• 💡 The TC is focused on empowering individuals within Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to lead and drive projects, rather than trying to manage every aspect themselves.
• 🛡️ Security is a key concern for OpenTelemetry, with the TC actively involved in addressing vulnerabilities and coordinating fixes across repositories.
• 🌐 OpenTelemetry is designed to be vendor-agnostic, providing a common API for telemetry data, and the TC is working to ensure that the project remains true to this vision.
• 📈 The future of OpenTelemetry includes a focus on refining context propagation, enhancing the developer experience for customizing telemetry, and potentially evolving the APIs to better leverage the foundational concepts of causality and context.

Q & A

What is the role of the Open Telemetry Technical Committee (TC)?

The Open Telemetry TC is responsible for guiding the project's technical direction, maintaining the specification repository, reviewing donation proposals, and ensuring cross-language consistency and stability in the implementation of Open Telemetry features.

Why did Jack Berg get involved with Open Telemetry?

Jack Berg joined Open Telemetry to reduce the time developers had to choose between using an open-source software piece that wasn't ready, like logs and metrics, and to accelerate the stability of these components within the project.

What is Jack Berg currently working on in Open Telemetry?

Jack Berg is working on configuration file-based configuration for Open Telemetry, aiming to provide a balance between programmatic configuration and environment variable-based configuration.

What brought Lilla to the Open Telemetry project?

Lilla was interested in library instrumentations and messaging scenarios, which led her to her current team at Microsoft, where she works on the AZ SDK and is involved with Open Telemetry.

What is Lilla's focus for the year in Open Telemetry?

Lilla is focused on stabilizing semantic conventions for messaging and databases within Open Telemetry, aiming to make the process less painful than HTTP.

How did Riley Yang get involved with Open Telemetry?

Riley Yang started as a C++ compiler developer and eventually worked on debugger profiling. He became involved with Open Telemetry through his work on the W3C Trace Context standard and later as a maintainer of the OpenTracing project.

What is Riley Yang's main focus as a TC member?

Riley Yang's main focus is on the Matrix API SDK specification and making Open Telemetry more reliable and performant for large-scale enterprise applications.

What is Josh Seret's background and how did it influence his involvement with Open Telemetry?

Josh Seret comes from the Scala language community and has a passion for open-source projects. His experience with observability in Scala and the strong community around Open Telemetry led him to join the project.

What is the process for stabilizing a new feature in Open Telemetry?

A new feature in Open Telemetry starts as experimental and requires implementation in a variety of languages before it can reach stability. The TC reviews these implementations across languages to ensure consistency and address any issues.

How does the TC ensure a balance between developer experience and cross-language consistency?

The TC involves experts from different languages in the specification process, reviews language implementations, and facilitates discussions to find a balance between idiomatic language use and cross-language consistency.

What is the role of a 'spec sponsor' in the Open Telemetry community?

A 'spec sponsor' is a trusted collaborator who can sponsor projects and has a meaningful approver role in the specification process. They help lead projects and contribute significantly to the Open Telemetry community.

How does the TC handle security vulnerabilities in Open Telemetry?

The TC takes security seriously. When a security vulnerability is reported, the TC works secretly with the reporter to understand the impact and scope, coordinates fixes across repositories, and ensures that patches are applied before making the vulnerability public.

What are some future improvements or refactorings that the TC is considering for Open Telemetry?

The TC is considering improvements around context propagation, leveraging the foundation of causality and context in Open Telemetry, and potentially revisiting the span events API for a more unified events approach.