jcoffey-dev 848bfeda4e Migration: name the four ways this goes badly, not just that it might
The section warned in general and so warned about nothing. An operator
reading "it can fail in ways it cannot undo" learns less than one reading
that the window is usually longer than guessed, that opening the source
store with the new server ends the rollback permanently, that a rollback
after mail has flowed does not bring that mail with it, and that a
certificate which stops renewing says nothing for ninety days. Each of
those has been measured or seen; each has something the operator can do
about it.

Also sharpens the part that matters most and is easiest to get wrong: the
old install is a service safety net, not a data one. One copy, same
machine, one moment. A backup is a copy elsewhere that has been restored
from, and anyone who cannot say when they last restored one does not yet
know whether they have one.

And replaces the flat line about nobody else being responsible with what
it was trying to say: the operator carries the outcome, because this is
software running against a server it has never seen, holding data somebody
else depends on.
2026-09-19 22:52:12 -07:00
2026-09-18 10:21:56 -07:00
2026-09-18 10:21:56 -07:00
2026-09-18 10:21:56 -07:00

inbuxa

A complete mail and collaboration server, every feature included, under the AGPL


INBUXA is a mail and collaboration server: JMAP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV and WebDAV, in one Rust binary, with ihasmail as its web front end. It is a fork of Stalwart. Project site: inbuxa.org (not up yet).

Stalwart ships some features only in a paid Enterprise Edition: multi-tenancy, masked email, undelete and others. INBUXA ships everything to everybody under the AGPL-3.0, rebuilding those features independently and without using any of Stalwart's Enterprise code.

Status: in development, not released. The fork builds, passes its unit tests, and runs as a working mail server. The Enterprise features are being specified and haven't been rebuilt yet. Don't run it in production.

What's different from Stalwart

  • Every feature, one edition. No license key, no edition checks, no upsell. See docs/spec/SPEC.md §4 for the features being rebuilt, and docs/spec/features/ for each one's specification.
  • Webmail and administration by ihasmail, as a separate service that can run beside the server or elsewhere. Stalwart's own web interface is removed, so there's no web front end on the mail host.
  • Clean-room rebuilds. Enterprise-only code is stripped from every upstream release before it's imported. The rebuilt features are written from specifications that use only public sources (docs/spec/SPEC.md §3).

How the fork is kept

Upstream releases arrive as stripped snapshots, never with upstream's git history, which contains Enterprise code. tools/fork/strip.py builds each snapshot on top of upstream's own ossify.py, then verifies it independently. The report for every import is in docs/fork/strip-reports/. See docs/spec/SPEC.md §2.

Building

cargo build --release -p inbuxa          # the binary is target/release/inbuxa
docker build -t inbuxa .                 # or the container image

Settings are read from INBUXA_* environment variables. An existing Stalwart install's STALWART_* variables still work, with a warning to rename them. New installs keep their data in /var/lib/inbuxa and logs in /var/log/inbuxa. Existing installs keep the paths their configuration already names, so none of their data moves.

License and credits

INBUXA is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.

It is a fork of Stalwart, copyright © Stalwart Labs LLC. Upstream's copyright notices are kept on every file they cover. Stalwart's files are dual-licensed AGPL-3.0-only or Stalwart's Enterprise License, and INBUXA takes them under the AGPL-3.0 only. A few of those files also carry code from other projects under MIT or BSD licenses, which stays under those licenses; THIRD-PARTY.md lists it with its notices. "Stalwart" is Stalwart Labs' name. INBUXA isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Stalwart Labs.

The INBUXA mark reuses ihasmail's cat-and-envelope artwork.

S
Description
Imported from github.com during the 2026-09-20 standup (local dir: inbuxa-server)
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