Background
The Messaging Semantic Convention Stability project is inactive, it has been moved to the projects/currently-inactive/ list in the community repo. The project's goal was to stabilize the messaging semantic conventions (metrics and traces) and update instrumentation to conform, originally targeted for the first half of 2024. That goal was not met: the conventions are still in Development status today, and the area has had little to no active review or maintainer engagement for roughly the past year.
I'd like to help reactivate this project and I'm volunteering to lead (or co-lead) the effort, together with a group of contributors from the community.
The gap became concrete recently: I opened semantic-conventions#3819 to define a messaging.cluster.id attribute, which reviewers on the .NET instrumentation side asked to be defined in semantic conventions first. The PR was auto-closed (labeled triage:rejected:declined), the expected triage behavior when an area has no active triagers, and a follow-up in the CNCF #otel-semantic-conventions Slack channel didn't get a response.
Why this matters
Messaging is a core observability domain, and instrumentation across many languages depends on these conventions being maintained and reaching stability. While the project is inactive, contributions stall and there's no clear path to move messaging forward. There's an existing project board with stability blockers and a backlog to pick back up from.
The plan to reactivate
I'm volunteering to help lead and coordinate the work, structured as a short → mid → long-term roadmap:
-
Short term (unblock instrumentation): land messaging.cluster.id and any other key attributes that are currently missing from the messaging semconv and blocking instrumentation across languages. These would be added at Development stability (not Stable) - the goal here is to get instrumentation unblocked and to get the area triaging/reviewing PRs again, rather than to stabilise.
-
Mid term (stabilise what's already defined): drive the messaging conventions that already exist from Development → Stable, working through the existing stability blockers and backlog. The focus here is deliberately not adding new conventions, but stabilising the ones currently defined (messaging spans/metrics, and the Kafka conventions) toward the project's original stability goal.
-
Long term (extend coverage): once the current conventions are stable, extend coverage to messaging systems and attributes not covered today - continuing to improve Kafka and RabbitMQ, and adding ActiveMQ.
-
Community: rally a group of contributors, reviewers, and prototypers to fill the "TBD" staffing slot and keep the area actively triaged.
Call for contributors
If you're interested in messaging conventions — as a contributor, reviewer, maintainer, prototyper, or just to follow along, please 👍 or comment. I'd love to get a few people together and bring this project back to life.
What's needed to reactivate
Following the project-management process, reactivating this project needs:
References
cc: @carlosalberto @trask @pyohannes @lmolkova @joaopgrassi @danielgblanco @open-telemetry/specs-semconv-maintainers
Background
The Messaging Semantic Convention Stability project is inactive, it has been moved to the
projects/currently-inactive/list in the community repo. The project's goal was to stabilize the messaging semantic conventions (metrics and traces) and update instrumentation to conform, originally targeted for the first half of 2024. That goal was not met: the conventions are still inDevelopmentstatus today, and the area has had little to no active review or maintainer engagement for roughly the past year.I'd like to help reactivate this project and I'm volunteering to lead (or co-lead) the effort, together with a group of contributors from the community.
The gap became concrete recently: I opened semantic-conventions#3819 to define a
messaging.cluster.idattribute, which reviewers on the .NET instrumentation side asked to be defined in semantic conventions first. The PR was auto-closed (labeledtriage:rejected:declined), the expected triage behavior when an area has no active triagers, and a follow-up in the CNCF#otel-semantic-conventionsSlack channel didn't get a response.Why this matters
Messaging is a core observability domain, and instrumentation across many languages depends on these conventions being maintained and reaching stability. While the project is inactive, contributions stall and there's no clear path to move messaging forward. There's an existing project board with stability blockers and a backlog to pick back up from.
The plan to reactivate
I'm volunteering to help lead and coordinate the work, structured as a short → mid → long-term roadmap:
Short term (unblock instrumentation): land
messaging.cluster.idand any other key attributes that are currently missing from the messaging semconv and blocking instrumentation across languages. These would be added atDevelopmentstability (notStable) - the goal here is to get instrumentation unblocked and to get the area triaging/reviewing PRs again, rather than to stabilise.Mid term (stabilise what's already defined): drive the messaging conventions that already exist from
Development→Stable, working through the existing stability blockers and backlog. The focus here is deliberately not adding new conventions, but stabilising the ones currently defined (messaging spans/metrics, and the Kafka conventions) toward the project's original stability goal.Long term (extend coverage): once the current conventions are stable, extend coverage to messaging systems and attributes not covered today - continuing to improve Kafka and RabbitMQ, and adding ActiveMQ.
Community: rally a group of contributors, reviewers, and prototypers to fill the "TBD" staffing slot and keep the area actively triaged.
Call for contributors
If you're interested in messaging conventions — as a contributor, reviewer, maintainer, prototyper, or just to follow along, please 👍 or comment. I'd love to get a few people together and bring this project back to life.
What's needed to reactivate
Following the project-management process, reactivating this project needs:
@open-telemetry/semconv-messaging-approversis still active, and whether to revive the established Thursday 8 AM PST meeting or continue async within the Semantic Conventions WG.References
cc: @carlosalberto @trask @pyohannes @lmolkova @joaopgrassi @danielgblanco @open-telemetry/specs-semconv-maintainers