Dovecot (software)

Dovecot
Original author(s) Timo Sirainen
Developer(s) Timo Sirainen and contributors
Initial release July 2002 (2002-07)
Stable release
2.3.2.1 / July 9, 2018 (2018-07-09)[1]
Repository
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Written in C
Operating system UNIX-like
Type POP3 and IMAP server
License Mostly MIT and LGPLv2[2]
Website www.dovecot.org

Dovecot is an open-source IMAP and POP3 server for Linux/UNIX-like systems, written primarily with security in mind.[3] Timo Sirainen originated Dovecot and first released it in July 2002. Dovecot developers primarily aim to produce a lightweight, fast and easy-to-set-up open-source mailserver.

The primary purpose of dovecot is to act as mail storage server. Mail is delivered to the server using some MDA and stored for later access with MUA. Dovecot can also act as mail proxy server, forwarding connection to another mail server, or act as a lightweight MUA in order to retrieve and manipulate mail on remote server for e.g. mail migration.

According to Openemailsurvey[4] Dovecot has an installed base of more than 3 million email servers and a global market share of 68% of all IMAP servers. While Dovecot software can be used commercially without any license fees, a commercial version is also available as Dovecot Pro. The commercial version is provided by Dovecot Oy along with support and enterprise add-ons such as the object storage and full-text search plugins. Since March 2015, Dovecot Oy has been part of the Open-Xchange Family.

Features

Dovecot can work with standard mbox, Maildir, and its own native high-performance dbox formats.[5] It is fully compatible with UW IMAP and Courier IMAP servers’ implementation of them, as well as mail clients accessing the mailboxes directly.

Dovecot also includes a Mail delivery agent (called Local delivery agent in Dovecot’s documentation) and an LMTP server, with optional Sieve filtering support.

Dovecot supports a variety of authentication schemas for IMAP, POP and message submission agent (v2.3) access including CRAM-MD5 and the more secure DIGEST-MD5.

With version 2.2 some new features have been added to Dovecot, e.g. additional IMAP command extensions, dsync has been rewritten or optimized, and shared mailboxes now support per-user flags.[6]

Version 2.3 adds a message submission agent, Lua scripting for authentication, and some other improvements.[7]

Apple Inc. includes Dovecot for email services since Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard.

In 2017, Mozilla, via the Mozilla Open Source Support program, conducted a security audit on the Dovecot software, the first public audit of the Dovecot code.[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Sirainen, Timo (9 July 2017). "v2.3.2.1 released". Dovecot-news (Mailing list). Retrieved 1 August 2018.
  2. ↑ "COPYING.LGPL file in dovecot 7repository". Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  3. ↑ "Dovecot website". Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  4. ↑ "Open email survey". Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  5. ↑ "Mailbox Format: dbox". Dovecot v2.x Wiki. 2012-10-30. Retrieved 2013-06-17.
  6. ↑ "v2.2.0 released". 2013-04-12. Retrieved 2013-06-17.
  7. ↑ "v2.3.0 released". 2017-12-22. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
  8. ↑ "Mozilla Security Audit". Retrieved 2017-01-13.
  • Official website Edit this at Wikidata
  • Official wiki with how-tos and documentation
  • "Dovecot + Sendmail = Perfect Mail Server". bobcares.com. 2008-01-12. Retrieved 2013-06-17.
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