The OpenTelemetry project aims to simplify the collection and management of telemetry data to enable developers to adopt observability best practices. It provides a standard vendor-agnostic interface, supports metrics, logs, and traces, and offers features such as auto-instrumentation, flexibility, and ease of use. The project has gained support from major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Red Hat, Cisco, and others, and is designed to work with cloud native applications and modern architectures. It allows developers to collect telemetry data without having to modify their codebase in many cases, making it easier to adopt observability best practices and improve the quality of software for everyone.