Below is from the Maliit wiki. In the filesystem I only found the maliit-server binary so I guess we can safely forget about all the mentions of the 'legacy-mode'.
...
In the future, it might be that the server can be autostarted by the input context.
Right know, gtk-im-context is javispedro's GSOC baby. If you want Maliit VKB support on Fremantle you should ask him for help.