Multi-language serialization discussion

[Bryan Duxbury]

I've been reading the discussion about what serialization/RPC project  
to use on http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Release1.0Requirements, and I  
thought I'd throw in a pro-Thrift vote.

It's already got libraries in many languages. It has pluggable  
protocols and transports (including asynchronous ones, in some  
languages), and even includes server implementations. It's  
automatically versioned and transparently backwards compatible with  
other versions. It will shortly be just as compact and fast as  
Protocol Buffers, and it's already in Apache.

As someone who has been working with and contributing to Thrift for a  
few months now, I have to say it seems like it fits the bill pretty  
nicely. The only possible issue is maturity, but hey as an Apache  
project yourself, you know what the solution to that is - patches!

If there are further detailed questions about features of Thrift or  
problems it might have, I'd love to make myself available to help  
answer them.

Thanks
Bryan