It's the only real alternative implementation (and more precisely, a fork of upstream protobuf), _and_ there is strong cooperation [1] [2] between both projects

It's the only real alternative implementation (and more precisely, a fork of upstream protobuf), _and_ there is strong cooperation [1] [2] between both projects to maintain a level of interoperability. And, it's not even protobuf I have a problem with - but things like HTTP implementations. There still isn't a canonical HTTP client/server implementation for Rust, while in Go basically everyone just uses `net/http`, or something that builds on top of that. Same for cryptographic primitives, TLS, context, ... [1] - https://docs.google.com/document/d/19kfhro7-CnBdFqFk7l4_HmwaH2JT_Rhw5-2FLWLEGGk/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/19kfhro7-CnBdFqFk7l4_Hmwa... [2] - https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/issues/386 https://github.com/gogo/protobuf/issues/386