Open source works because it is a relationship that benefits both sides. Lately, a few actors have started treating Stalwart as something to feed on instead. This post explains what has been happening, why our test suites are moving to a private repository, why the license is not changing, and how the Enterprise edition keeps the Community edition alive.
Two years ago we shipped MTA Hooks in Stalwart Mail Server as a modern, HTTP-based alternative to Milter. In the time since, it has gone from a Stalwart feature to a protocol used across thousands of deployments worldwide, with implementations being built by third parties and interest from major players in the mail filtering ecosystem. We are now taking the next step: standardizing MTA Hooks at the IETF, so that it stops being “the Stalwart way of doing things” and becomes an open protocol that any MTA and any filter can speak.
