OpenTelemetry Specification

The OpenTelemetry specification describes the cross-language requirements and expectations for all OpenTelemetry implementations.

• The latest release is hosted at opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel
• Markdown sources are under specification

Change / contribution process

For details, see CONTRIBUTING.md, in particular read Proposing a change before submitting a PR.

Questions

New to CNCF Slack? Create an account first, then join the #otel-specification channel for questions and discussion.

Questions that need additional attention can be brought to the regular specifications meeting. EU and US timezone friendly meeting is held every Tuesday at 8 AM Pacific time. Meeting notes are held in the Google doc. APAC timezone friendly meetings are held on request. See OpenTelemetry calendar.

Escalations to technical committee may be made over the email. Technical committee holds regular meetings, notes are held here.

Specification compliance matrix by language

See Compliance of Implementations with Specification.

Project Timeline

The current project status as well as information on notable past releases is found at the OpenTelemetry project page.

Information about current work and future development plans is found at the specification development milestones.

Versioning the Specification

Changes to the specification are versioned according to Semantic Versioning 2.0 and described in CHANGELOG.md. Layout changes are not versioned. Specific implementations of the specification should specify which version they implement.

Changes to the change process itself are not currently versioned but may be independently versioned in the future.

License

By contributing to OpenTelemetry Specification repository, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under its Apache 2.0 License.

Maintainers

The maintainers of the specification are a superset of the Technical Committee.

• OpenTelemetry Technical Committee
• Josh Suereth, Google
• Robert Pająk, Splunk

For more information about the maintainer role, see the community repository.

Approvers

Specification sponsors represent the approver role for the specification, along with additional responsibilities and privileges.

• Alex Boten, Grafana Labs
• Christian Neumüller, Dynatrace
• Cijo Thomas, Microsoft
• Daniel Dyla, Dynatrace
• Josh Suereth, Google
• Juraci Paixão Kröhling, OllyGarden
• Leighton Chen, Microsoft
• Marc Alff, Oracle
• Severin Neumann, Independent
• Ted Young, Grafana Labs
• Tristan Sloughter, MyDecisiveAI
• Tyler Yahn, Splunk

For more information about the approver role, see the community repository.

Triagers

• OpenTelemetry Governance Committee

For more information about the triager role, see the community repository.

Emeritus

• Christian Beedgen, Approver
• Daniel Jaglowski, Approver
• David Poncelow, Approver
• Nikita Salnikov-Tarnovski, Approver