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Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

millert.dev

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Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#241

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

OsamaJaber wrote: post #27

30+ years maintaining one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on nearly every Linux and Unix system, and he's currently looking for a sponsor to fund continued development. Every company running sudo in production owes this man. Someone should fix that

I wonder how many guys who have have written or significantly maintained "household name" level FOSS products just earn a corporate sinecure somewhere as hypercompetent remote sysadmins or ICs or something. Folks who don't necessarily care to earn top dollar, with all the headaches that entails, but also almost never have to actually work more than 2 hours in a given day to keep the ship going, and the arrangement is just so cozy and gives them enough time to themselves to work on their actual passion that they accept the arrangement.

I know of at least one recruiter who does something like this and specializes in greybeard hiring, and it seems like a steady niche if you have the network to pull it off.

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#242

Post by ninkendo »

qznc wrote: post #239
ryandrake wrote: post #112

Reading the release history[1]. I'm kind of shocked that sudo gets active development and monthly releases. I would have thought that something this old and venerated would have been "done" long ago. 1: https://www.sudo.ws/releases/devel/

It seems to have features I was not aware of. I would not have guessed that it contains anything networking-related.

Sudo’s networking functionality is infuriating too, because if my system’s DNS is broken, I get to wait 60 seconds for sudo to work, during which time I can’t even ctrl+c to cancel!

(It has to do with sudoers entries having a host field, since the file is designed to be deployed to multiple servers, which may each want differing sudoers rules. It’s truly 90s era software.)

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#243

Post by usrbinbash »

latexr wrote: post #225
hobofan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Done" software is a myth they tell to young developers so that they can sleep easy at night.

Absolutely false. I have built tons of tools which are feature complete and continue to work to this day without intervention. Heck, I even have tools I no longer use that people asked me to keep available because they do, and they’ve been chugging along for over a decade, no bugs or maintenance necessary. Just today I saw a report of Adobe discontinuing a tool in use by professionals because it is done and they don’…

> Absolutely false. I have built tons of tools which are feature complete and continue to work to this day without intervention

And how many of these tools are mission critical to the point that they are installed on almost every Linux box in existence, probably invoked tens of billions of times per day, both by humans and software, and the entire world would be in deep goddamn trouble if there was a serious security flaw that doesn't get fixed immediately?

Because that's what `sudo` is.

And no, such software is never "done".

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#244

Post by account42 »

qznc wrote: post #239
ryandrake wrote: post #112

Reading the release history[1]. I'm kind of shocked that sudo gets active development and monthly releases. I would have thought that something this old and venerated would have been "done" long ago. 1: https://www.sudo.ws/releases/devel/

It seems to have features I was not aware of. I would not have guessed that it contains anything networking-related.

Feature bloat is the last thing you'd want in security relevant software.

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#246

Post by account42 »

OsamaJaber wrote: post #27

30+ years maintaining one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on nearly every Linux and Unix system, and he's currently looking for a sponsor to fund continued development. Every company running sudo in production owes this man. Someone should fix that

> one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure

It's really not.

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#247

Post by account42 »

shimman wrote: post #96
brightball wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good example of Diffusion of Responsibility. Everybody thinks somebody else should help, so nobody does.

Seriously, just put a VAT on digital services to fund a system that pays out grants to individuals to help maintain open source software. It should be obvious by now that corporations will rat fuck the commons for monetary gain and there is a serious need for democratic initiatives to put technology back into the hands of the people.

No thanks, we don't need yet another specialty tax paid out to a dubious selection of individuals.

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#248

Post by Joe_Cool »

esnard wrote: post #240
sodimel wrote: post #235

Didn't knew that sudo had a website with a... somewhat interesting logo: https://www.sudo.ws/

Wow, is it related to the "make me a sandwich" XKCD? https://xkcd.com/149/

You do realize the answer is right there: https://www.sudo.ws/about/logo/

(and the old logo) ;)

Re: Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

#249

Post by account42 »

shevy-java wrote: post #85
OsamaJaber wrote: post #27

30+ years maintaining one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on nearly every Linux and Unix system, and he's currently looking for a sponsor to fund continued development. Every company running sudo in production owes this man. Someone should fix that

I disagree on "the most critical" part. You can be superuser at all times. I understand the arguments why not; I am pointing out that this is possible. Despite people claiming aliens will arrive and nothing will work, everything works fine when the superuser account is used too. Also, I disagree that every company needs to pay the man. Funding is important, yes, but a *nix system is not crippled without sudo. You can…

You don't even have to be root all the time, su is all you need unless you have a fetish for software bloat.
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