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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

#91

Post by butterfi »

SoftTalker wrote: post #24
stego-tech wrote: post #3

This is why Big Tech is so desperate for AI to work as a wholesale replacement for software developers: they do not pay for their Open Source consumption as-is, and new maintainers aren’t stepping up because they can’t afford rent, let alone to devote their full time to FOSS work free of charge like a lot of older project maintainers do. The fact that sudo is a critical security pillar for trillions of dollars of glo…

Why should something like sudo not be "done" after 30 years? Sudo is one of the poster children for creeping featuritis, to the point that the sudoers man page is a meme ("Don't despair if you are unfamiliar with EBNF ...") Even OpenBSD gave up and implmented their own simplified replacement (doas).

Because environments change, it hasn't been immutable.

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

#92

Post by fragmede »

anigbrowl wrote: post #81

I've said it before, open source works poorly in this area. It's great if everyone's getting paid fat money in a day job and can maintain their pet project a few days a month, but that's just not true for a lot of people. It's disgusting that maintainers of critical projects have to go through the humiliation of begging for money, and absurd to suggest they all hang out Kofi or PAtreon banners. Realistically nobody i…

> Realistically nobody is going to go through their bash history working out what utilities they use in order of frequency and allocating funds to the maintainers proportionally.

Not if we don't make it easy for them. I had Claude whip up fundcli a while ago, but this post got me to finally upload it. It goes through your http://atuin.sh/ history (raw .bash_history/.*history doesn't have enough information) and generates links to projects for you to donate to.

    git clone https://github.com/fragmede/fundcli
    uv run src/fundcli/cli.py analyze
    uv run ./src/fundcli donate --amount 100
to get links to donate $100 for last month's usage. There's also http://thanks.dev if you're looking for other places to donate to based on your open source usage.

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

#93

Post by kristopolous »

whatis991 wrote: post #71
kristopolous wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't let cynical greedy bastards set the terms for how the rest of society wishes to engage

There can be "cynical greedy bastards" in many places. If you optimize against them in one regard and place, will you also handle them elsewhere well? And calling for change can be abused by some of them to open new opportunities for exploitation, this time benefitting some different group of them. You need to have an alternative, and it needs to be a credible and reliable one, to ensure that it does not end up being…

I really think that criminal theory needs to progress. We differentiate between say consensual intimacy and rape and we don't let the existence of sexual abusive people set the terms for our romantic encounters.

We have carved out a class of engagements, labeled it deeply asocial, criminalized it and now we pursue people who engage in it through legal means.

Business really doesn't have this. Personal example - last week I was at a place where the business owner tried to overcharge me by an order of magnitude and then verbally attacked me when I caught him and backed out of the transaction.

His google and yelp reviews are full of people claiming false charges and all kinds of fraud, refusal to correct and repeated abuse until they closed their cards. It's wildly obvious what's going on here and I was on the ball enough to catch it.

I contacted the police and they said "well you should call the BBB or something". It's dozens of reviews of clear credit card fraud and for some reason because he's a merchant, doesn't seem to hit the radar.

These are purely criminal matters - people acting habitually in bad faith with ill intent in a brazenly dishonest manner.

Whether it's plundering the commons, polluting the public discourse, or breaking other types of social compacts, these should be treated the same as any other crime.

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

#95

Post by varun_ch »

divbzero wrote: post #52
kleiba wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...although this one would have been a good fit too, of course: https://xkcd.com/149/

This xkcd is featured as the maintainer’s user icon on GitHub: https://github.com/millert

and it's also the inspiration for the logo of sudo https://www.sudo.ws/

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

#96

Post by shimman »

brightball wrote: post #69
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

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.

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

#97

Post by whatis991 »

kristopolous wrote: post #93
whatis991 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be "cynical greedy bastards" in many places. If you optimize against them in one regard and place, will you also handle them elsewhere well? And calling for change can be abused by some of them to open new opportunities for exploitation, this time benefitting some different group of them. You need to have an alternative, and it needs to be a credible and reliable one, to ensure that it does not end up being…

I really think that criminal theory needs to progress. We differentiate between say consensual intimacy and rape and we don't let the existence of sexual abusive people set the terms for our romantic encounters. We have carved out a class of engagements, labeled it deeply asocial, criminalized it and now we pursue people who engage in it through legal means. Business really doesn't have this. Personal example - last…

Does your country allow suing him for a large monetary amount? Have you talked to the media? A lawyer? Maybe together with others? Made it as easy as possible for the police to get him, paper trail, receipts and all?

You do have points, though, but there might at least be some actions that you and others can take in this case. Maybe a medium change like changing the law on this specific point might make sense.

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

#98

Post by jandrese »

ak009 wrote: post #79
jandrese wrote: post #30

Honestly he should open a Patreon. There are loads of people that would subscribe to Sudo for $2/month or $5/month.

wouldn't https://github.com/sponsors/sudo-project achieve the same thing in this case?

That's great, I wish he had mentioned it.

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

#99

Post by jongjong »

anigbrowl wrote: post #81

I've said it before, open source works poorly in this area. It's great if everyone's getting paid fat money in a day job and can maintain their pet project a few days a month, but that's just not true for a lot of people. It's disgusting that maintainers of critical projects have to go through the humiliation of begging for money, and absurd to suggest they all hang out Kofi or PAtreon banners. Realistically nobody i…

I feel like this should have been the responsibility of investors and venture capitalists. In a normal society, the moneyed folks should give special treatment to the folks who have proven themselves to be effective givers.

Unfortunately, it seems like either the moneyed folks don't care or the current financial structure simply does not support this.

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

#100

Post by aftbit »

einsteinx2 wrote: post #73
bobmcnamara wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$.01/user/month would be quite a bit here

Subtract the standard ~3 cent transaction fee and he’d end up owing money instead. That seems to always be the catch with micropayment ideas.

It almost seems like someone ought to be able to build some kind of digital currency with low transaction fees and no centralized payment processor that could power microtransactions. I wonder why nobody has done that yet.
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