Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
github.blog
Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#2Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#3Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
In the context of this article - opentelemetry is for performance tracing on the backend. The call to the endpoint would already end up in access logs, and this would just give more detailed performance metrics on queries and function calls.
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#4Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
even if they did, that would't mean anything. They could easily construct an argument that surfacing ads serves to improve the application (with a few extra rethoric steps in between).
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#5Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
This is likely more in the realm of observability than what you’re thinking. eg metrics, logs and traces. Could you store marketing data in here? Sure, but that’s not really what opentelemetry is built for.
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#6Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
It seems that, in the majority of cases, we are left with trust at the end of the day. They might say "we will never do X" but if someone buys them, then the "we" becomes something different, and the new company is free to do whatever. With github, it's that paragon of good behaviour Microsoft that controls things.
These promises need to be written down in the articles of association in a company, and I have never seen this.
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#7Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
They're not using "telemetry" as a euphemism for "shipping spyware to end users to record their actions on their own machine", in this case. This appears to be a very fancy log aggregation product that has also eaten logging/tracing related configuration deployment functionality.
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#8Considering GH is MS-owned, i'm even more reluctant to use it.
Anything that leaves your computer and enters hardware owned by MS should make you think twice about using a certain service/product.
Same goes for almost every other company out there.Also FOMO is not an argument, there are plenty of alternatives for almost everything out there.If it's comfort people are worried about then they should stick to iPads and ditch software-dev, because trends like these are why the quality of software has been declining drastically in the last decade.
These streamlined processes of using telemetry for the "product's good" are just a way to compensate that.
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#9Are there any examples of companies making a contractually binding pledge to never use any telemetry data for anything than improving the application/service... NEVER for creating marketing profiles or for surfacing ads?
even if they did, that would't mean anything. They could easily construct an argument that surfacing ads serves to improve the application (with a few extra rethoric steps in between).
If a company is serious about this type of promise, they should take away their ability to change their mind in the future with a Ulysses pact[1]. See this[2] older post where for a bit more detail from a talk by Cory Doctorow.
>> The answer to not getting pressure from your bosses, your stakeholders, your investors or your members, to do the wrong thing later, when times are hard, is to take options off the table right now.
Re: Why and how GitHub is adopting OpenTelemetry
#10I think it would be great to show the performance impact of these SDKs because it is one of the really important aspects of monitoring (being non-intrusive).