-1 non-binding
Disclaimer: I like OTel project and even in Fluent ecosystem we are working towards integration with it.
My reasons might be controversial but I think OTel is not ready for incubation "yet".
As an end-user and project maintainer, I care about usability. OTel aims to cover Traces, Metrics, and Logs:
At this point, only Traces are in GA state. Usable.
Metrics: API and SDKs are "DRAFT" and the collector is experimental. Per my understanding, there is no stable integration with openmetrics or Prometheus ecosystem (for me and "many companies" this is a must). Partial usable.
Logs: API and SDKs are "DRAFT", the collector is experimental. Not usable.
A project at the incubation stage has to demonstrate maturity and wide adoption, if this is not the case as a foundation (CNCF) we might be sending the wrong message to the end users.
We aim to incubate projects with enough maturity and a minimal level of usability, but this is not the case. This is nothing against OTel but a purely technical opinion. I know we cannot incubate a sub-set of it like Traces only, but this is a complete offering and there are missing pieces of integration and implementation.
I think moving OTel to incubation might help cloud vendors to spread the message, but what about the end users?
The formal doc states:
"TOC acknowledged the gaps in stability and adoption of significant Logging and Metric parts of the OpenTelemetry project. TOC confirmed it should not be a blocker for incubation. "
I disagree, I think this is a blocker, there is so much pressure from vendors..., and rushing things might not be beneficial for the long term.
Why not wait a bit more and do a proper incubation with the minimal pieces on it? I think staying in Sandbox a bit more will be beneficial for the project while rushing it might hurt the ecosystem.