Todd C. Miller, one of those lesser-known open-source heroes (and a longtime OpenBSD developer) whose work we rely on every day and who has maintained sudo for more than 30 years, published a public appeal seeking individuals or organizations willing to fund the tool’s continued development and maintenance.
He shared the following on his personal page:
“For the past 30+ years I’ve been the maintainer of sudo. I’m currently in search of a sponsor to fund continued sudo maintenance and development. If you or your organization is interested in sponsoring sudo, please let me know.”
As you know, sudo is a critical component of nearly all Linux distributions and many Unix-like systems, allowing controlled privilege escalation and forming part of the default system security model on servers, desktops, and embedded systems alike.
At the same time, sudo’s role extends far beyond. It is widely deployed across enterprise environments, cloud infrastructure, networking appliances, and embedded devices, making its security and reliability particularly important.
Sudo was originally written in the early 1980s by Bob Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer. Todd C. Miller began maintaining sudo in 1994, taking over stewardship of the project and becoming its primary developer. Since then, he has overseen its security model, feature evolution, portability, and long-term maintenance.
Given how fundamental this project is, I sincerely hope this situation is resolved quickly. Miller stated that interested sponsors can contact him directly to discuss funding arrangements.
In closing, there’s no reason to panic about sudo being left unmaintained. This is not the case. A look at the last changelog shows that Miller continues to actively and carefully maintain the project, with the most recent updates landing just two weeks ago.
