[rabbitmq]

Master-slave etc are HA techniques for replicating state eg queues (or "channels" as nsq calls them?). "Decentralized and distributed" has nothing to do with state, master/slave or any of that; it's a topological property of your system. You can certainly build a decentralized and distributed system using a set of brokers, regardless of whether they support HA.

[matticakes]

That's fair, you certainly can use rabbitmq in a distributed and decentralized fashion.

You bring up an important point though... What is important is the topology we're promoting and the platform we've built to support it. The actual queue is less important and it made sense for us to own that piece to achieve our goals.

[rabbitmq]

So, why not just deliver that topology using off the shelf components? Rabbit, Kafka, ZeroMQ, ... the toolbox is deep. This is not meant as a criticism, I am simply trying to understand what I am missing when I look at your design :-)