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None of the APM providers like New Relic, Data Dog, or Azure App Insights want a truly open ecosystem. The only reason they support "Open" Telemetry is because

None of the APM providers like New Relic, Data Dog, or Azure App Insights want a truly open ecosystem. The only reason they support "Open" Telemetry is because they're worried about lock-in at the data sources. For example, App Insights supports rich/structured telemetry via its proprietary SDK and various APIs. No open-source developer in their right mind would ever hard code such a proprietary dependency into something published under a truly open license. Now that rich telemetry instead of simple text logging is starting to become an increasingly popular approach, the proprietary APM vendors got nervous that they would get "locked out" of the entire open source ecosystem, to be replaced by a data source that is open and not compatible with their proprietary sinks. Hence Open Telemetry. It was always about making the source open, not the sink.

api 4y ago
Open source these days is very often about making the thing you use to consume SaaS open so it can spread as widely as possible, but it’s never made easy to commoditize the SaaS part.
phillipcarter 4y ago
I won't speculate on the top-level strategies of companies competing with another, so take this as a grain of salt. From my perspective (maintainer, employed by a vendor), all of us who work for these different companies collaborate very well together. We all recognize that it's both technically tractable and fundamentally user-friendly to make instrumentation be a common standard that anyone can use to point at any of the OSS and commercial tools in this space. There's plenty to differentiate on with telemetry backends, querying experiences, API capabilities, data analysis tools and UX, etc. We have a long way to go to see this vision fully realized, but it's quite far along and I have no doubt we'll arrive at the right outcome here.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Everything you've just said is compatible with what I've said. The vendors are concerned about being left out at the "source", and are seeking to differentiate with their proprietary "sink", usually closed-source SaaS solutions. I'm not even arguing that this is bad, it's just how markets work, and it's currently beneficial to developers in general, including both open-source developers and the type working in a cubicle farm somewhere.
  - phillipcarter 4y ago
    ...sure? I guess I'm saying that I don't really care about this speculation, since the reality on the ground is that we all collaborate.
bushbaba 4y ago
100% disagree. I've talked with many of those providers and their CSuites are actually behind the open ecosystem. You forget many of them have huge marketshare to gain by having an open ecosystem

api 4y ago

Open source these days is very often about making the thing you use to consume SaaS open so it can spread as widely as possible, but it’s never made easy to commoditize the SaaS part.

phillipcarter 4y ago

I won't speculate on the top-level strategies of companies competing with another, so take this as a grain of salt. From my perspective (maintainer, employed by a vendor), all of us who work for these different companies collaborate very well together. We all recognize that it's both technically tractable and fundamentally user-friendly to make instrumentation be a common standard that anyone can use to point at any of the OSS and commercial tools in this space. There's plenty to differentiate on with telemetry backends, querying experiences, API capabilities, data analysis tools and UX, etc. We have a long way to go to see this vision fully realized, but it's quite far along and I have no doubt we'll arrive at the right outcome here.

jiggawatts 4y ago
Everything you've just said is compatible with what I've said. The vendors are concerned about being left out at the "source", and are seeking to differentiate with their proprietary "sink", usually closed-source SaaS solutions. I'm not even arguing that this is bad, it's just how markets work, and it's currently beneficial to developers in general, including both open-source developers and the type working in a cubicle farm somewhere.
- phillipcarter 4y ago
  ...sure? I guess I'm saying that I don't really care about this speculation, since the reality on the ground is that we all collaborate.

bushbaba 4y ago

100% disagree. I've talked with many of those providers and their CSuites are actually behind the open ecosystem. You forget many of them have huge marketshare to gain by having an open ecosystem