opentelemetry-specification

What the specification is

The OpenTelemetry specification describes the cross language requirements and expectations for all OpenTelemetry implementations. The readme states that the latest release is hosted at opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel, and that the Markdown sources live under the specification directory of the repository. The document is the reference that every language specific OpenTelemetry library must conform to, so it is the place where behavior is agreed rather than implemented. The project is large and widely adopted, with the repository reporting 4324 stars and 996 forks on GitHub. Changes follow a defined contribution process, and the readme points contributors to CONTRIBUTING.md, in particular the instruction to read the Proposing a change section before submitting a pull request. Questions that need more attention can be raised at the regular specifications meeting, with a Europe and US friendly meeting held every Tuesday at 8 AM Pacific time and meeting notes kept in a Google doc, while APAC friendly meetings are held on request through the OpenTelemetry calendar. Escalations to the technical committee can be made over email, and the technical committee holds its own regular meetings. The spec is therefore both a document and a governance process. Vendors implement the text in their own languages while the spec stays the single point of agreement.

Versioning and compliance

Versioning of the specification follows Semantic Versioning 2.0, and changes are described in a CHANGELOG.md file. Layout changes are explicitly not versioned. The readme notes that specific implementations of the specification should state which version they implement, so that users can tell whether a given library matches the behavior they rely on. A compliance matrix by language, called Compliance of Implementations with Specification, lets readers see how completely each language binding tracks the current text. The current project status and notable past releases are summarized on the OpenTelemetry project page, and information about current work and future plans lives in the specification development milestones. This separation between the normative text, the changelog, the compliance matrix, and the roadmap is what lets many independent language teams advance at different speeds while still referring to one source of truth. The readme also surfaces project health signals: an OpenSSF Scorecard link and a Best Practices badge, which speak to how the specification project is maintained rather than to the telemetry data itself. For someone adopting OpenTelemetry, the practical takeaway is to check both the spec version a library claims and the compliance matrix before assuming a feature is present. Readers are expected to check the claimed version before relying on a specific behavior.

Maintainers and licensing

The specification is maintained by a group that is a superset of the OpenTelemetry Technical Committee. The readme lists the maintainers as the OpenTelemetry Technical Committee plus two named individuals, Josh Suereth of Google and Robert Pająk of Splunk. The approvers, described as specification sponsors who hold the approver role with extra responsibilities, are a longer list that includes Alex Boten of Grafana Labs, Christian Neumüller of Dynatrace, Cijo Thomas of Microsoft, Daniel Dyla of Dynatrace, Juraci Paixão Kröhling of OllyGarden, Leighton Chen of Microsoft, Marc Alff of Oracle, Severin Neumann as an independent, Ted Young of Grafana Labs, Tristan Sloughter of MyDecisiveAI, and Tyler Yahn of Splunk, alongside Josh Suereth and Robert Pająk. Triagers are handled by the OpenTelemetry Governance Committee. The readme also names emeritus approvers who previously held the role. By contributing to the repository, a contributor agrees that their contributions are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. This governance structure, with a technical committee, a broad approver set drawn from multiple vendors, and a governance committee handling triage, reflects the multi vendor, CNCF affiliated nature of OpenTelemetry. The specification is the backbone that keeps the ecosystem interoperable as it grows. The listed approvers come from several competing vendors, which helps keep the spec vendor neutral.

Editorial conclusion

The repository is published under the Apache-2.0 license and its most recent commit was on 2026-08-26.