About opentelemetry

Imagine you have a house and you want to keep an eye on all the rooms in the house to make sure everything is working fine. You decide to install security cameras in every room. But here's the catch - you choose different brands of cameras for each room, and they all have their own apps and software to view and manage the cameras.

Now, imagine that you need to keep an eye on everything happening in the house, so you need to check each app separately to see what's going on in each room. This becomes really hard and time-consuming, especially if you need to keep switching between apps to get a complete picture of what's happening.

In a similar way, observability tools (like monitoring, logging, and tracing systems) allow you to keep an eye on your applications and infrastructure. However, if you use different tools from different vendors, they may not be compatible with each other. This means that you would need to use different interfaces to access and manage the data, just like using different apps for different cameras in different rooms.

This is where OpenTelemetry comes in. It provides a standard way to collect, export, and process data from different sources, regardless of the vendor or technology used. This means that you can use a single interface to access and manage all the data, just like using a single app to view and manage all the cameras in your house. This makes it much easier and more efficient to monitor your systems and applications, without having to worry about compatibility issues.

OpenTelemetry is a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs used to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) to help analyze your software’s performance and behavior.

Now you understand what opentelemetry is, let us get to the meat of this article.

Three compelling reasons why you should contribute to opentelemetry

Opentelemetry welcomes contributions from all skill sets - every skill set can make a difference!

The beauty of opentelemetry is it provides specifications for observability that can be followed by anyone. Literally, any tech stack can implement its own version!

Currently, there are implementations in GO, javascript, swift, C++, java, dotnet, python, erlang, rust, ruby, and PHP. You do not see your tech stack, here? No problem, you can start yours and join the opentelemetry party! As stated earlier, there is a well-documented specification that you can follow.

Another exciting thing to note about the project is that anyone can create their own version of any existing solution. OpenTelemetry is like a giant playground where you get to build your own observability toys! Whether you want to create a custom collector, a collector component, or an SDK, you have the freedom to make it your own. You are welcome to contribute your own solution in the contrib repositories.

Oh! And if you are nontechnical, please join in! We need folks who can turn complicated code into simple words, design beautiful websites, plan awesome community events, whatever your skillset! Don't be shy, come join the party! We'll teach you what an SDK is if you promise to teach us how to use that cool new GIF tool.

Collaborate with industry leaders and experts in the field.

OpenTelemetry is an open standard and open-source implementation with contributors from companies like AWS, Microsoft, Splunk, etc. Collaborating with these people can be a great way to learn new things and expand your skill set, you'll have the chance to learn from some of the best and brightest in the industry. Not only that, but you'll also have the opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise with others. It's a win-win situation that benefits everyone involved!

Become a part of Opentelemetry's success

Opentelemetry is recording increasing adoption and so contributing to OpenTelemetry means becoming a part of a thriving community that is revolutionizing the observability landscape. At the 2022 end-of-the-year report by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), opentelemetry was recognized as the second-highest velocity project in terms of the number of contributors. By being a part of this project, you have the opportunity to shape the future of observability and leave a lasting impact on the industry. Your work will be used by developers and organizations around the world for years to come. You have the chance to make a real difference and be a part of a project that's driving change and innovation in the tech industry.

So, "trace" your way to the CNCF slack community and join the #opentelemetry slack channel to get started!

Credit: The visual explanation at the beginning of how opentelemetry works was written thanks to chatgpt. I also used chatgpt to help articulate my thoughts better throughout the article.