The legacy-protocols switch was all or nothing. An operator can now stop
POP3 and keep IMAP: each of IMAP, POP3 and ManageSieve has its own
switch, server-wide on inbuxa:ProtocolPolicy and per tenant on
inbuxa:TenantProtocolPolicy (properties imap, pop3, manageSieve).
legacyProtocols stays as the kill-all: setting it sets all three, and it
reads "disabled" exactly when all three are off. A policy stored before
this has only legacyProtocols and reads as all three at that value, so
existing servers and tenants carry over unchanged. In one /set, a
protocol named beside legacyProtocols overrides it.
SMTP submission keeps no switch of its own: sign-in over it is refused
only when all three are off, as the single switch did (LP-6), so
turning one protocol off never stops a mail app sending. For a tenant,
the server's switches and the tenant's count together.
Server-wide, a change closes the listeners of whatever is now off and
puts back the saved listeners of whatever is on again, both in one
change if asked; listeners of a protocol still off stay saved. Sign-in,
autoconfig, autodiscover, PACC (now prepared once per combination) and
the suggested DNS records all follow each protocol separately. A tenant
may turn a protocol on only while the server has it on (LP-9), and the
refusal names which. The JMAP session adds legacyAllowed, the protocols
still allowed for the account; legacyProtocols there keeps its meaning
for older webmail builds. Events name the switches ("pop3 disabled"),
and audit before/after reads every switch even from an older policy.
Tested: unit tests for the switches, the old-policy reading, the
server/tenant combination, the tenant refusal and listener refusal; and
tests/e2e/legacy_protocols.py against a running server, all 100 checks,
including new ones: POP3 alone off closes only its port and refuses
only its sign-in while IMAP and sending go on; only POP3 stops being
advertised; one change closes IMAP and reopens POP3; a tenant turns
POP3 off for itself, and can't turn IMAP on while the server has it off.
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. Documentation: docs.inbuxa.org.
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.
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, anddocs/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 aren't read: the server stops at startup and
names each one to rename.
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, modified by Coffey Labs in 2026. Upstream's copyright notices are kept on every file they cover, and every upstream file this fork changed says so in its header, under the notice it came with. 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.