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Protobuf seems like the odd one out. I understood that googlers created it for their own benefit and tossed it over the wall because "why not". Am I mistaken?
by psd1 3y ago
Protobuf seems like the odd one out. I understood that googlers created it for their own benefit and tossed it over the wall because "why not". Am I mistaken?
- palata 3y agoI don't know about the actual decision, but I can see the result: Protobuf is ubiquitous. Now take it like this: if Protobuf was not open source, wouldn't there be an alternative? I would say probably, since there are already alternatives (just not as popular as Protobuf). So from Google's perspective, not open sourcing Protobuf does not really give them an edge: alternatives exist. However, by open sourcing it, they end up with a ton of devs who learn Protobuf outside of Google. That makes it easier for Google technology to be adopted if they release something new, and when they hire a new engineer, it's a win if he already knows Protobuf. Same applies to gRPC and others.