Apache Mailet freed from Apache James

The Apache James developers have announced that Apache Mailet 2.4 is now independent of the Apache James enterprise mail server. Mailet provides a Java API for developers to create mail agents that can be combined to process enterprise email. In a similar style to HTTP Servlets, developers can create a Mailet that can respond to service calls. Through this method, the Mailet recieves an email, which is contained in an instance of the API's Mail class, for further processing. Mailets are an attempt to make the mail processing functions reusable and portable between enterprise mail servers. The Mailet API was developed for the James mail server to provide its mail processing capabilities. Mailets are executed in a Mailet container and Apache James includes one implementation of a Mailet container. The Mailet API and code had previously only been distributed as part of the Apache James code.

The Mailet project also incorporates a number of sub projects beyond the Mailet API. Mailet Base is a basic toolkit of Mailet implementations. Mailet Standard is a collection of Mailets with minimal dependencies. Mailet Crypto contains mailets which can sign and verify signatures and finally, jSieve Mailet is an implentation of RFC3028 for Java. In terms of other changes, Mailet 2.4 is, apart from some bug fixes, the same as Mailet 2.3, the version number increment is mostly to denote its new status as stand alone project.

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