---
title: "About BabelQueue"
description: "BabelQueue is an open-source, broker-agnostic queue standard and set of SDKs, created and maintained by Muhammet Şafak and released under the MIT licence."
source: https://babelqueue.com/about/
updated: 2026-08-22T00:00:00.000Z
---

# About BabelQueue

BabelQueue is an open-source standard — plus the SDKs that implement it — for queue messages
that any language can read. It is free software, developed in the open, and maintained by
Muhammet Şafak.

## What it is

A producer in one language writes a job to the broker you already run; a consumer in another
language picks it up and handles it. That works because every SDK emits the same strict JSON
envelope instead of a language-specific serialization format — no PHP `serialize()` on the wire,
no bridge service, no schema registry to operate. Messages are identified by a
[URN](/docs/spec/1.x/urn/) rather than a class name, and a `trace_id` is carried unchanged across
every hop.

The [envelope is frozen](/docs/spec/1.x/envelope/) at `schema_version 1`: no field is added,
renamed, removed or retyped without a deliberate version decision, so a v1 producer stays readable
by every v1 consumer indefinitely. That guarantee — not any single SDK — is the product.

There are six SDK cores today (PHP, Python, Go, Node.js, Java and .NET), each with framework
adapters and per-broker transport modules, and all of them are locked to a shared cross-SDK
conformance suite of golden envelopes. The [wire contract](/docs/spec/1.x/introduction/) is the
normative reference; the SDKs follow it, never the other way round. The vocabulary those pages
use is defined term by term in the [glossary](/glossary/).

## Who maintains it

BabelQueue was created and is maintained by **Muhammet Şafak**
([@muhammetsafak](https://github.com/muhammetsafak)), who also writes the specification, the SDKs
and the articles on this site. Work happens in public in the
[BabelQueue organisation on GitHub](https://github.com/BabelQueue), where each SDK, the shared
conformance suite and this website live in their own repositories.

## Licence

The standard and every SDK are released under the **MIT licence**. You can use BabelQueue
commercially, fork it, and vendor it into a closed-source product; every SDK repository carries
the licence text (© 2026 Muhammet Şafak).

## Getting involved

Bug reports, questions and pull requests are welcome on the repository for the SDK you are using —
open an issue in the [GitHub organisation](https://github.com/BabelQueue) and it will land with the
maintainer. Two things are worth knowing before you file:

- Anything that touches the wire format is a contract change, not a bug fix. It needs a recorded
  decision and a version choice, so expect that conversation to start in the spec rather than in a
  patch.
- Behaviour that differs between two SDKs is the highest-value report there is — parity is the
  whole promise. Include the envelope both sides produced.

New to the project? Start with the [documentation](/docs/), the [FAQ](/faq/), the
[glossary](/glossary/), or the [blog](/blog/).