eclipse-zenoh/zenoh-c

zenoh-c provides the essential bridge for the Zenoh protocol into the world of embedded systems, legacy industrial software, and robotics (notably ROS 2 via rmw_zenoh). Zenoh itself is a category-defining protocol for decentralized data management that outperforms MQTT in throughput and DDS in resource efficiency. The defensibility of this specific repository stems from its role as an official Eclipse Foundation project and its deep integration into the robotics ecosystem (e.g., Autoware, micro-ROS). While it is a binding for the core Rust implementation, the 'moat' here is the domain expertise required to manage memory safety across the C/Rust FFI and the massive switching costs for industrial users already using Zenoh for edge-to-cloud telemetry. The 86 forks suggest significant downstream adaptation by hardware vendors. Frontier labs (OpenAI, etc.) are unlikely to compete here as they focus on high-level reasoning rather than the low-level transport protocols of edge infrastructure. The main threat is the long-term industry shift toward native Rust (zenoh-pico) or the continued dominance of established DDS vendors like RTI, but Zenoh's superior performance in constrained environments makes it a strong contender for the future of edge-native communications.