Metrics, logs, and traces are abstract categories of telemetry data, representing the most common modalities of how that data is produced and consumed. They are

Metrics, logs, and traces are abstract categories of telemetry data, representing the most common modalities of how that data is produced and consumed. They are explicitly not specific or concrete types that can be precisely defined by an e.g. Protobuf schema These domain concepts are descriptive, not proscriptive. They don't, and can't possibly, have specific wire-level definitions. So another way to phrase my point might be to say that OTel is asserting definitions which doesn't actually exist. Telemetry necessarily requires specialization between producer (application/service) and consumer (observability backend) in order to deliver acceptable performance. It's core to the program as it is written: more like error handling than e.g. containerization.