Apache James

Last updated

Apache James
Developer(s) Apache Software Foundation
Stable release
3.8.1 / February 23, 2024;11 months ago (2024-02-23) [1]
Repository James Repository
Written in Java
Platform Java SE
Type Mail transfer agent
License Apache License 2.0
Website james.apache.org

Apache James, or Java Apache Mail Enterprise Server, is an open source SMTP and POP3 mail transfer agent written entirely in Java. [2] James is maintained by contributors to the Apache Software Foundation, with initial contributions by Serge Knystautas. [3] [4] IMAP support was added in 2010 in version 3.0-M2 (released as stable 3.0.0 in 2017), and JMAP support in version 3.6.0 in 2021. In 2021 open source company Linagora upgraded the government system providing email for every citizen of Estonia to use Apache James. [5] [6]

Contents


The James project manages the Apache Mailet API which defines "matchers" and "mailets". These allow users to write their own mail-handling code, such as to update a database, build a message archive, or filter spam. [2] A matcher is used to classify messages based on some criteria, and then determines whether the message should be passed to an appropriate mailet for processing. Mailets are so-called due to their conceptual similarity to a servlet, [7] and arose because Sun Microsystems declined a proposal to include mail-handling in the servlet implementation. [4] James ships with a variety of pre-written matchers and mailets to serve common tasks. [7] Many sets of mailets and matchers can be combined to produce sophisticated and complex functional behaviour.

The Apache James project also produces pure Java libraries for implementing Sender Policy Framework (SPF), the Sieve mail filtering language, and parsing MIME content streams, independent of Sun's JavaMail API.

Development

James was originally formed under the Jakarta Project as Jakarta-James. [4] In January 2003, James was upgraded to a top-level Apache project in a unanimous decision by the ASF Board of Directors, under the chairmanship of Serge Knystautas. James was initially distributed within the Phoenix container, which implemented the Apache Avalon application framework. [7]

After the closure of the Apache Avalon project in 2005, the Apache James server code was extensively reworked to use the Spring application framework, which was finally released as version 3.0.0 in 2017. [8] [9]

VersionReleasedNotes [9]
2.3.0October 2006
2.3.1April 2007
2.3.2August 2009 [8]
2.3.2.1September 8, 2015security fix
3.0.0July 20, 2017 IMAP support, draft JMAP support
3.0.1October 20, 2017security fix
3.1.0July 31, 2018
3.2.0November 14, 2018
3.3.0March 26, 2019
3.4.0September 5, 2019
3.5.0July 16, 2020Support for Docker, distributed configuration using Cassandra, ElasticSearch, RabbitMQ and S3 backends [10]
3.6.0March 16, 2021Java JRE 11 required, JMAP RFC-8621 support [11]
3.7.0March 1, 2022maildir support removed, support for OAuth, OpenID Connect, security and performance improvements [12]
3.8.0May 17, 2023Improved IMAP support, JMAP Quotas, OpenSearch [13]
3.8.1January 9, 2024security fix [14]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "GitHub tag: james-project-3.8.1". GitHub . Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  2. 1 2 James Server - Overview
  3. ↑ "James Project - Who We Are". Archived from the original on 2011-11-01. Retrieved 2008-02-22.
  4. 1 2 3 "Board of Directors Meeting Minutes". Apache Software Foundation. 2003-01-22. Retrieved 2008-02-23.
  5. ↑ "Apache James". Linagora. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  6. ↑ "Highlight Track: Getting Apache James to serve 1M+ digital mailboxes of all Estonian residents". ApacheCon@Home. ApacheCon. September 21, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  7. 1 2 3 Claude Duguay (2003-06-10). "Working with James". IBM. Archived from the original on 29 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-22.
  8. 1 2 "News Archive". Apache James Project. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  9. 1 2 "Commit 59f8772: CHANGELOG.md". Apache James Project. July 17, 2024. Retrieved January 27, 2025– via GitHub.
  10. ↑ "Apache James Server 3.5.0". Apache James Project. July 16, 2020. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  11. ↑ "Apache James Server 3.6.0". Apache James Project. March 16, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  12. ↑ "Apache James Server 3.7.0". Apache James Project. March 21, 2022. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  13. ↑ "Apache James Server 3.8.0". Apache James Project. May 17, 2023. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  14. ↑ "Apache James Server 3.8.1". Apache James Project. January 9, 2024. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
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