What I wanted: Small library that just prints to stdout in a standard format. No network code in that library. A separate executable that actually sends the logs to wherever needed, and whose vulnerabilities can be fixed independently from my app.
What I got: The kubernetes of observability. Load a bunch of libraries that connect to the network from inside your app. If you can't use automatic instrumentation then now you have setup your exporters, providers, processors, and whatever. Everything feels too brittle. Its big surface area means I fear the next refactor where every setting will get a different name and functions get deprecated even if the actual telemetry format doesn't change.