StalwartLabs

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/

Comment · 1 year ago

Thanks for follow-up. You're absolutely right that there's a distinction between privacy and anonymity. However I just want to clarify that my decision to keep a low personal profile online stems from a deep belief in privacy, not secrecy.

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.

Comment · 1 year ago

I understand your perspective, many open source communities are built on transparency, and it's natural to want to know the people behind a project.

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!

Comment · 2 years ago

On Stalwart you can implement masked e-mail using address rewriting:

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

Comment · 3 years ago

Hello HN,

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!

StalwartLabs

Recent submissions

Stalwart v1.0: The Fastest Mail Server on the Planet s stalw.art

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DKIM2 and DMARCbis Have Landed s stalw.art

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Stalwart v1.0: The Fastest Mail Server on the Planet stalw.art

Sievepad: Write and debug Sieve scripts in the browser sievepad.com

DKIM2 and DMARCbis Have Landed stalw.art

JMAP for Calendars, Contacts and Files Now in Stalwart stalw.art