In a significant development within the open observability space, the OpenMetrics project has been officially archived and merged into Prometheus. This move, approved by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Technical Oversight Committee in July 2024, marks the end of an era for OpenMetrics and the beginning of a new chapter for Prometheus.
The Birth of OpenMetrics
OpenMetrics was originally created to decouple Prometheus’ exposition format, aiming to establish an independent, tool-agnostic open specification. It was even housed under a repository named OpenObservability on GitHub, separate from Dotan Horovits’ podcast OpenObservability Talks. Its inception was driven by the idea of creating a universal format for metric time series data, which was to be used across various tools and platforms.
The Journey of OpenMetrics
For a while, there were efforts to make OpenMetrics an official open standard (RFC2119) by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), but it failed to materialize. Eventually, Prometheus emerged as the dominant standard in the cloud-native domain. Many tools now natively support exporting metrics in Prometheus format. However, tools outside the Prometheus ecosystem continue to use their own formats, with no immediate switch.
The Merge into Prometheus
The OpenMetrics project, which faced some confusion among Prometheus users regarding which format to use for exporting and receiving metric time series data, has now found its place back under the Prometheus format. The CNCF TOC approved the archive of OpenMetrics and its migration to the Prometheus project. This merger is expected to streamline Prometheus-related work, reduce confusion, and lower overhead.
The Impact of the Merge
The merge of OpenMetrics into Prometheus has several implications:
- Simplification: The merge will make it easier for developers to work with Prometheus, as they will have a single, unified format to work with.
- Standardization: By adopting Prometheus’ format, OpenMetrics will help standardize the way metrics are represented and exchanged across different tools and platforms.
- Community Collaboration: The merge is likely to foster greater collaboration between Prometheus and OpenMetrics communities, leading to the development of more robust and feature-rich observability solutions.
Conclusion
The merger of OpenMetrics into Prometheus is a testament to the power of open-source collaboration and the continuous evolution of the cloud-native ecosystem. While OpenMetrics may have been archived, its vision of a universal format for metric time series data will live on as part of Prometheus. This move will undoubtedly benefit the entire open observability community, making it easier for organizations to monitor and manage their systems effectively.
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