And by inspired, you mean "a complete rip-off of".

I talked with some of the guys who did Thrift, and while they didn't steal code, the concept and config files are close to identical.

Identical config files aside, the concept itself is rather simple and it has been around for ages in a form of ASN.1 and its encodings. It also routinely used in custom network protocols, e.g. IPC or RPC ones. Anyone outside of the XML fanboy club is aware of these things :-)

File format wise, it's hardly a rocket science too. When developers re-implement something, it's only natural to recycle an established implementation element. Changing it just for the sake of being different from another vendor is frankly quite dumb.

So I'd be careful with bold "rip-off" statements. In the end "Everything new is a well-forgotten old".

Well, I don't believe calling it a rip-off was necessarily criticism. As they say: mediocrity borrows, genius steals.

Also, I must plead ignorance. I've never worked with ASN.1 or these other formats. From my cursory examination, ASN.1 seems to be far more complex.

this is a complete fabrication. facebook's thrift was inspired by pillar, an rpc library written in ml by former cto adam d'angelo.

I understand why Facebook might want to claim this in public, but don't call people 'fabricator', okay? You never know when someone might just have conclusive evidence that proves you wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I admire Facebook for making Thrift public, and it was a great thing for the internet. It was probably foolish of me to focus on the lineage of the thing.