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OpenTelemetry

opentelemetry.io

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Re: OpenTelemetry

#11

Post by dmitrygr »

sveiss wrote: post #6
dmitrygr wrote: post #5

Not a mention of "opt-in only, because we respect privacy"... Please stop helping spy on users! Be the change you want to see in the world!

That's because this tool has nothing to do with "spying on users". It's a set of tools and a specification for instrumenting applications and collecting logs/metrics/traces from them. It's used to ask questions like "why is this page slow to load?" and get answers like "because it talks to the billing microservice which has a really slow SQL query". This isn't the same sort of telemetry that desktop software vendors…

Sadly, it seems you are wrong: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/js/

"the browser"

That means they are running code on my machine and exfiltrating data out.

Re: OpenTelemetry

#13

Post by lizthegrey »

splittingTimes wrote: post #9

We are trying to get a better understanding of how customers use our desktop application. We are urged by management to use Qualtrics, but it feels like it is not the right tool for the job. How would you say does opentelemetry compare to Qualtrics? Is Qualtrics a tool where users need to actively fill out surveys and opentelemetry collects passively user interactions? There is also other names floating around in thi…

OpenTelemetry allows you to measure performance of your frontend and backend, but it's not a survey tool. DataDog is one of many compatible backends that works with OpenTelemetry, but you can also use Jaeger OSS, Honeycomb, Lightstep, and others.

Re: OpenTelemetry

#14

Post by rad_gruchalski »

spullara wrote: post #2

I hate that this specification and most of the other ones use spans that have a beginning and end rather than events that start and end the span. What if it crashes before it sends out the span? What if it is taking a very long time to complete?

You can emit multiple spans yourself, no?

Re: OpenTelemetry

#15

Post by lizthegrey »

phillipcarter wrote: post #10
iddan wrote: post #7

I really hope we’ll have an open standard for tracing. Right now the common solutions are vendor-locking and can’t be integrated in OSS projects

That's definitely a goal of OTel! And it seems to be working. Anecdotally, OTel support has been very important for my workplace (we sell observability tooling https://www.honeycomb.io/ ) in terms of prospects. I think a lot of decision makers at companies are realizing that they can't afford not to have vendor-neutral instrumentation. And tracing is GA in most SDKs as well, so you should feel ready to adopt it. Seve…

Phillip also wrote https://leaddev.com/monitoring-observability/rise-openteleme... today, but is too shy to plug it :)

Re: OpenTelemetry

#16

Post by rad_gruchalski »

dmitrygr wrote: post #11
sveiss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because this tool has nothing to do with "spying on users". It's a set of tools and a specification for instrumenting applications and collecting logs/metrics/traces from them. It's used to ask questions like "why is this page slow to load?" and get answers like "because it talks to the billing microservice which has a really slow SQL query". This isn't the same sort of telemetry that desktop software vendors…

Sadly, it seems you are wrong: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/js/ "the browser" That means they are running code on my machine and exfiltrating data out.

Define “they”, please.

Re: OpenTelemetry

#17

Post by splittingTimes »

lizthegrey wrote: post #13
splittingTimes wrote: post #9

We are trying to get a better understanding of how customers use our desktop application. We are urged by management to use Qualtrics, but it feels like it is not the right tool for the job. How would you say does opentelemetry compare to Qualtrics? Is Qualtrics a tool where users need to actively fill out surveys and opentelemetry collects passively user interactions? There is also other names floating around in thi…

OpenTelemetry allows you to measure performance of your frontend and backend, but it's not a survey tool. DataDog is one of many compatible backends that works with OpenTelemetry, but you can also use Jaeger OSS, Honeycomb, Lightstep, and others.

Strictly only the performance or can it also answer usage questions like:

When customers go through this workflow step, they use this option/button 90% of the time and the other options are used rarely?

Re: OpenTelemetry

#18

Post by lizthegrey »

splittingTimes wrote: post #17
lizthegrey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenTelemetry allows you to measure performance of your frontend and backend, but it's not a survey tool. DataDog is one of many compatible backends that works with OpenTelemetry, but you can also use Jaeger OSS, Honeycomb, Lightstep, and others.

Strictly only the performance or can it also answer usage questions like: When customers go through this workflow step, they use this option/button 90% of the time and the other options are used rarely?

BI/funnel analytics is a use case that you might have more luck with https://www.tinybird.co/ instead.

Re: OpenTelemetry

#19

Post by robbedpeter »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #16
dmitrygr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it seems you are wrong: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/js/ "the browser" That means they are running code on my machine and exfiltrating data out.

Define “they”, please.

They as in "they" who are receiving the data being collected about the user. It isn't hard to see who the bad guys are.

If this is implemented in a totally transparent, user controlled, consensual way, and the collected data made ephemeral and subject to user request for deletion and viewing on demand while being stored, then there's nothing bad going on.

Anything less is unacceptable - a line is being crossed. Right now a majority of the encounters users have with telemetry is totally opaque and behind the scenes, nonconsensual except for the barest shreds of a EULA or button click fig leaf.

Re: OpenTelemetry

#20

Post by FateOfNations »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #16
dmitrygr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it seems you are wrong: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/js/ "the browser" That means they are running code on my machine and exfiltrating data out.

Define “they”, please.

The developer of the web app... who is already running all sorts of other code in your browser.
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