[Donation Proposal]: Arize OpenInference code grant to accelerate OpenTelemetry's GenAI instrumentation coverage

[mikeldking]

Description

Arize proposes to donate the source code of OpenInference — a mature, production-tested set of GenAI / LLM instrumentation libraries covering a broad range of LLM SDKs and agent frameworks — to the OpenTelemetry
project as a code grant, to accelerate and expand OpenTelemetry's existing GenAI / LLM instrumentation coverage.

This is a code grant, not a transfer of the OpenInference project: Arize will continue to own, host, and develop OpenInference in its existing repository. The grant covers the instrumentation code — the per-SDK / per-framework instrumentations and shared
base utilities (paths listed under Repository) — and gives OpenTelemetry the right to re-release that code under its own copyright and license, without carrying forward Arize copyright headers or NOTICE attributions (see Reasons for donation below).

Out of scope: the OpenInference specification and semantic-conventions definitions; OpenTelemetry will continue to use its own GenAI semantic conventions. Convergence of the OpenInference and OpenTelemetry code bases or specifications is not part of this donation
and may be revisited separately in the future.

Benefits to the OpenTelemetry community

OpenInference covers many GenAI SDKs and agent frameworks that OpenTelemetry does not yet instrument. Using it to bootstrap OpenTelemetry's GenAI instrumentation in these areas would substantially shorten time-to-availability for OpenTelemetry users.

Reasons for donation

Although OpenInference is already Apache-2.0, importing it as-is would require OpenTelemetry to preserve Arize's copyright headers and NOTICE attributions indefinitely. A formal code grant lets OpenTelemetry relicense the donated code under the standard "Copyright The OpenTelemetry Authors" header and accept it through its normal CLA-governed contribution flow.

Repository

https://github.com/Arize-ai/openinference>

Existing usage

Public adoption signals for the donated packages (last-30-day downloads, May 2026):

• PyPI:

  - openinference-instrumentation (shared base utilities): ~5.7M
  - openinference-instrumentation-langchain: ~2.2M
  - openinference-instrumentation-openai: ~2.0M
  - openinference-instrumentation-openai-agents: ~760K
  - openinference-instrumentation-anthropic: ~510K
  - openinference-instrumentation-bedrock: ~430K
  - openinference-instrumentation-crewai: ~335K
  - openinference-instrumentation-mcp: ~75K

• npm:

  - @arizeai/openinference-core (shared base utilities): ~510K
  - @arizeai/openinference-vercel: ~195K
  - @arizeai/openinference-instrumentation-langchain: ~170K
  - @arizeai/openinference-instrumentation-openai: ~65K

Maintenance

Within the OpenTelemetry project, the donated code will be maintained by the relevant existing SIGs and instrumentation repositories (for example the language instrumentation repos and the GenAI SIG). No ongoing engagement from Arize is expected or required
as part of this donation; any future collaboration would be arranged separately.

Licenses

• OpenInference is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 — see the repo-root LICENSE.

• As part of this donation, Arize grants OpenTelemetry / the CNCF the right to relicense the donated code under OpenTelemetry's standard Apache-2.0 license with copyright attributed to "The OpenTelemetry Authors", and to drop Arize-specific copyright headers
  and NOTICE entries from the resulting OpenTelemetry-hosted code.

• Arize confirms that it holds sufficient rights in the donated code to make this grant. External contributions to OpenInference are made under Arize's Contribution License Agreement, which grants
  Arize a sublicensable copyright and patent license to all submissions.

Trademarks

The "OpenInference" name and logo are retained by Arize and will not be used for the imported code, which will follow the naming conventions of OpenTelemetry's existing instrumentation repositories.

Other notes

Paths included in the grant, by language:

• Python — python/instrumentation/, python/openinference-instrumentation/
• JavaScript / TypeScript — js/packages/openinference-instrumentation-*, js/packages/openinference-core, js/packages/openinference-vercel, js/packages/openinference-tanstack-ai
• Java — java/instrumentation/, java/openinference-instrumentation/
• Go — go/openinference-instrumentation-*, go/openinference-instrumentation/

Explicitly not part of the grant: the top-level spec/ directory and the */openinference-semantic-conventions/ packages in each language.

[tedsuo]

Thank you for the proposal @mikeldking! Just to give you an update, we're excited about this, and we've submitted a request to the CNCF to understand what paperwork might be required. More details coming soon!

[trask]

Thanks @mikeldking! We've figured out the donation process for this with the CNCF. Please go ahead and send a one-time PR (removing any Arize copyright headers and NOTICE attributions) to https://github.com/open-telemetry/donation-openinference. We will merge that PR and archive the repository, and then the GenAI SIG will be able to start cherry-picking instrumentations over from that archived repository into opentelemetry-python-genai, opentelemetry-js-contrib, etc.

[mikeldking]

@trask will do!

Thanks @mikeldking! We've figured out the donation process for this with the CNCF. Please go ahead and send a one-time PR (removing any Arize copyright headers and NOTICE attributions) to https://github.com/open-telemetry/donation-openinference. We will merge that PR and archive the repository, and then the GenAI SIG will be able to start cherry-picking instrumentations over from that archived repository into opentelemetry-python-genai, opentelemetry-js-contrib, etc.

will do!