* Includes libprotobuf-c , a pure C library that implements protobuf encoding and decoding, and protoc-c , a code generator that converts Protocol Buffer .proto files to C descriptor code, based on the original protoc . protobuf-c formerly included an RPC implementation; that code has been split out into the protobuf-c-rpc project. * Open Source & Easy to use.

* Protocol buffers are a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for serializing structured data – think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler. * You can use special generated source code to easily write and read your structured data to and from a variety of data streams and using a variety of languages. * You can even update your data structure without breaking deployed programs that are compiled against the "old" format.