Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804016

Points: 84

# Comments: 70

https://stalw.art/docs/install/upgrade/

The goal is to stabilize the database layout/configuration format very soon so v1.0.0 can be released (hopefully before Q1/Q2 2026).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45672336

Points: 391

# Comments: 202

It’s also worth noting that only about 5% of the codebase is Enterprise, and that small slice helps fund ongoing development and expansion of the team [1]. As much as I'd love to be completely sponsor-funded, the reality is that open source projects still need to cover real-world costs. For what it's worth, Stalwart has received two NLNet grants [2] [3] to support open protocol work, which hopefully reinforces our commitment to open source.

So while the optics of this situation may look rough from the outside, I promise it’s not some “open source in name only” kind of thing. It’s just one of those painful balance acts between building features, maintaining packages, and paying the bills.

And hey, if you're heading back to Maddy, no hard feelings. But the door’s always open if you want to give Stalwart another shot down the road.

[0]: https://stalw.art/docs/development/compile [1]: https://stalw.art/compare/#faq [2]: https://nlnet.nl/project/Stalwart/ [3]: https://nlnet.nl/project/Stalwart-Collaboration/

To give you more context about the project: Stalwart Labs was indeed started and is currently led by a single developer: myself. I have over 30 years of experience working with email technologies and have previously founded three email-related companies.

That said, I’m not working entirely alone. While I’m the core developer and founder, there are others involved in Stalwart Labs today handling support, sales, and maintaining smaller parts of the codebase (mostly changes required by clients). My plan is to continue leading development myself until the project reaches version 1.0, which I hope will happen later this year. After that milestone, the goal is to gradually expand the development team, particularly to support work on a Rust-based webmail and calendar interface that will complement the mail server.

Stalwart’s development has been largely self-funded, aside from two NLNet grants. I’ve been growing the team organically and intentionally. While I have been approached by two VC firms, I’ve chosen to decline their offers. Not just to avoid external pressure (and stress), but also because some proposed directions conflicted with promises I’ve made to the community. For example, there have been suggestions to move some open-source features behind a paywall, which I’m against and promised the community never to do.

As for enterprise support, yes, Stalwart Labs offers an enterprise license that includes premium support services. And regarding adoption, I'm happy to say that there are currently a few hundred enterprise clients using Stalwart in production. While I would need the clients' permissions to share their names, I can say that Mozilla Thunderbird is one of them. They’ve publicly announced their upcoming launch of thundermail.com, which is powered by Stalwart.

I hope that gives you more clarity and confidence in the project. Thanks.

That said, I personally value privacy highly, which is actually one of the main reasons I started Stalwart Mail Server. I don't maintain a personal presence on LinkedIn or other social media platforms, not because I'm trying to be anonymous, but because I prefer to focus on the work rather than promoting myself. I’ve found that platforms like LinkedIn are more noise than signal for me, especially with constant recruiter spam.

That being said, Stalwart Labs as a company is far from hidden. You can find our company page on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stalwartlabs/. We're also active on:

* Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@stalwartlabs * Twitter/X: https://x.com/stalwartlabs * Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/stalwartlabs/

While I may not be putting my personal life on display, I’m committed to transparency where it matters most: through the project’s code, documentation, and community engagement. I hope that helps clarify things!

https://stalw.art/docs/smtp/rewrite/address

Excited to announce that Encryption at Rest has just been added to the open source Stalwart Mail Server. With this addition, the mail server will now automatically encrypt all incoming plaintext emails, utilizing either OpenPGP or S/MIME, before they are written to disk. Importantly, the keys are owned and controlled by the end user, ensuring that not even system administrators can decrypt these messages.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36984719

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

https://stalw.art/docs/smtp/inbound/data#content-filters https://stalw.art/docs/smtp/inbound/data#spam-filtering

https://stalw.art/docs/management/migrate

Only from enthusiasts, the main problem is that there are very few email clients supporting JMAP. Big players such as Google and Microsoft do not seem interested in JMAP so adoption has been painfully slow so far.

> What is stalwarts relationship to Fastmail, do they use stalwarts software?

No relation. Fastmail uses Courier IMAP as far as I know.

I'm excited to announce the release of Stalwart Mail Server, a single binary solution that combines the Stalwart JMAP, Stalwart IMAP, and Stalwart SMTP servers into one easy-to-install package.

In response to your feedback, some key enhancements were made. Stalwart Mail Server now supports LDAP and SQL authentication, providing seamless integration with your existing infrastructure. For single node setups, RocksDB has been replaced with SQLite with the option of using LiteStream for replication. For larger, distributed setups, support for FoundationDB was added, letting you scale to millions of users without sacrificing performance. Additionally, it is now also possible to store your emails in an S3-compatible storage solution such as MinIO, Amazon S3, or Google Cloud Storage.

Other notable updates include support for disk quota, subaddressing (or plus addressing) and catch-all addresses.

Check it out here: https://github.com/stalwartlabs/mail-server

I look forward to your feedback and questions!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36757296

Points: 17

# Comments: 13