Logs can represent point in time, or spans, or anything you choose. Logs can have the span-id attached to them (and normally should), so they are hierarchical.

In short, logs can do everything spans can do, depending on how you use them. So really there isn't much distinction.

I'd say that spans and logs are about 95% similar, whereas metrics are wildly dissimilar to both.

Most tools would be be better if they treated spans and logs as two nearly-identical things:

- logs should be viewable in a hierarchy if they have a span id associated - spans should be queryable and countable and alarmable and dashboardable with the same tools as logs