Commercial Support Now Available For Sudo

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "sudo has been free software for over 20 years and 'allows a system administrator to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while logging the commands and arguments.' (Previous /. stories include how you can use it to distribute root access and also how Microsoft patents sudo - ummmm, have they heard of prior art?!?) While it will continue to be freely available, Todd Miller (the sudo maintainer for the last 10+ years) has decided to offer commercial support. For those thousands of Sysadmins out there who have benefited from sudo, here's your chance to thank Todd for a wonderful tool and also help support further development of sudo."

ACLs

[FullMetalAlchemist]

In a traditional unix environment sudo is nifty, however, with FreeBSD we have had powerful ACLs for quite some time; enabled by default in 5.x, so no need for patches.
With it you have better control, it's more dynamic and powerful. At first it may look complex, but you will develop understanding of them really fast, and it will be well worth it.
Try it out. [daemonnews.org]

op...

[kosmosik]

Don't forget there are also alternatives as 'op' -- https://svn.swapoff.org/op -- it is quite different from sudo and may please your needs. :-) Also this M$ patent is pathetic. op site states that this tool was released in 1990... And for me sudo and op are technically (probabl were also 10 years ago) superior to MS RunAs service which plainly sucks...

Comments from the article poster

[xmas2003]

Boy, some /.'ers are a bit ungrateful - maybe I'll send The Incredible Hulk [komar.org] after some of 'ya! ;-)

I submitted this story because Todd is one of the "good guys" out there IMHO. I agree that USING sudo isn't that difficult (especially in simple environments), but writing it is a bit more work and remember that sudo is a privilaged program so it needs to be pretty darn "tight" in terms of security stuff, and if you read through the release notes, there are all sorts of interesting subtle issues that have been addressed, plus the feature set has expanded - for example, LDAP support.

Todd has selflessly maintained/updated/supported sudo for over a decade - anyone on his Email lists know that he responds pretty darn quick. And he's not trying to "pull a RedHat" here - you can continue to use those channels and get the same code base for free. I.e. he's done such a good job that it is fair to ask the question "why buy support" since you get it for free anyway!

First, as correctly pointed out, if you are a big Corporation, they often like the "security" of having a support contract - yea, it's kinda dumb, but anyone who works at a big company knows what I'm talking about.

And second, if you appreciate good software, here's an easy way to toss a few $$$ Todd's way to thank him for all his work. In this day-n-age of spammers/slimebags all trying to make a buck, Todd is a throwback to the "free sharing" of an earlier era of the Internet.

Disclaimer: I have used sudo for over a decade (and also live in the Boulder, Colorado area), but otherwise have no profession/personal relationship with Todd. Like I said, I just think he's a "good guy" who deserved a little bit of recognition.

Yes, there's a point

[millert]

What's the point? Well, the main point is I need to eat :-) But in all seriousness, various people have enquired about commercial support over the years so this is an attempt to provide that. While the average user with a simple sudoers file won't need support, large installations with complex configs may wish it.

This is also an experiment to see if I can make free software pay the bills. I'm currently without regular employment and I need to find ways to fund my sudo and OpenBSD developement work...