FWIW, this isn't used much by the community. Being a standard library package it still get some use of course, but for comparison, encoding/gob shows about 22.5

FWIW, this isn't used much by the community. Being a standard library package it still get some use of course, but for comparison, encoding/gob shows about 22.5K imports [1] to encoding/json's nearly 800K, and whereas you can see in the JSON search an ecosystem of JSON libraries, gob is basically just gob. Calling it "dead" just invites a tedious thread about what the definition of "dead" is, so I won't, I'll just sort of imply it in this sentence without actually coming out and saying it in a clear manner. I would generally both A: recommend against this, not necessarily as a dire warning, just, you know, a recommendation and B: for anyone who is perturbed by the idea of this existing, just be aware that it's not like this package has embedded itself into the Go ecosystem or anything. [1]: https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=gob https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=gob [2]: https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=json https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=json