What: Graduation DD - OpenTelemetry

[TheFoxAtWork]

Why:

• Completion of DD and adopter interviess

This change address the need by:

• documenting the DD
• recording the adopter interviews
• Resolving [Graduation] OpenTelemetry Graduation Application #1739

CC @dims

[riaankleinhans]

/toc

[riaankleinhans]

/kind dd

[JohnHillegass]

+1 for graduation! I’ve integrated OTEL into so many projects that I honestly forgot it was still in the incubating phase. IMO it's as ubiquitous and reliable as k8s for day-to-day operations. Fully support getting this merged!

[szuecs]

I miss one thing: a way to show span drops

As far as I know the OTEL client library will drop spans silently and server side has also no metric for span drops.

As one, that already observed a full cluster with normal 50k-150k RPS, that had 0 RPS caused by span drops, I think graduation should have this as a requirement.

[angellk]

Thank you to @TheFoxAtWork and @dims -- this has been an incredibly thorough review of the project for consideration at the Graduation maturity level.

[angellk]

I miss one thing: a way to show span drops

As far as I know the OTEL client library will drop spans silently and server side has also no metric for span drops.

As one, that already observed a full cluster with normal 50k-150k RPS, that had 0 RPS caused by span drops, I think graduation should have this as a requirement.

Thank you for this feedback @szuecs -- please also follow-up with the project if you haven't already with your concerns.

[szuecs]

I miss one thing: a way to show span drops
As far as I know the OTEL client library will drop spans silently and server side has also no metric for span drops.
As one, that already observed a full cluster with normal 50k-150k RPS, that had 0 RPS caused by span drops, I think graduation should have this as a requirement.

Thank you for this feedback @szuecs -- please also follow-up with the project if you haven't already with your concerns.

There are many reports already
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20drop

Also a specific one to go client open since ~2 years
open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go#5557

[austinlparker]

I miss one thing: a way to show span drops
As far as I know the OTEL client library will drop spans silently and server side has also no metric for span drops.
As one, that already observed a full cluster with normal 50k-150k RPS, that had 0 RPS caused by span drops, I think graduation should have this as a requirement.

Thank you for this feedback @szuecs -- please also follow-up with the project if you haven't already with your concerns.

There are many reports already https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20drop

Also a specific one to go client open since ~2 years open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go#5557

Thanks for the feedback, but as that issue you linked points out we do emit diagnostic information for dropped spans. The Collector also emits various metrics for spans/logs/datapoints dropped under pressure (or in various other scenarios).

There's a discussion about creating a generalized set of self-health metrics for the SDK (open-telemetry/semantic-conventions#2152) that may interest you. We'd welcome your contributions. :)

further notes --

"Spans may be dropped at many points in a telemetry pipeline (the SDK exporter, a Collector processor, a Collector exporter), and for many different reasons, which means these drops need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis by users. For these reasons, it would be very difficult to have a single project-wide way to report dropped spans, and each individual component would still be individually responsible for implementing that reporting. If you know of specific situations or components which do not currently surface this information, feel free to look for or file specific issues."

[TheFoxAtWork]

/vote

[git-vote]

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@TheFoxAtWork has called for a vote on What: Graduation DD - OpenTelemetry (#2134).

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[riaankleinhans]

/check-vote

[git-vote]

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So far 45.45% of the users with binding vote are in favor and 0.00% are against (passing threshold: 66%).

Summary

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5	0	0	6

Binding votes (5)

User	Vote	Timestamp
TheFoxAtWork	In favor	2026-05-06 19:23:27.0 +00:00:00
angellk	In favor	2026-05-06 22:05:42.0 +00:00:00
dims	In favor	2026-05-07 0:51:19.0 +00:00:00
jeremyrickard	In favor	2026-05-06 19:52:18.0 +00:00:00
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@kgamanji	Pending

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