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Commercial Support Now Available For Sudo

Posted by timothy on from the looks-good-on-an-invoice-too dept.

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."

5 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by Piquan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not like sudo's a particularly difficult-to-use program. What's the point?

    1. Re:Huh? by soyle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > It's not like sudo's a particularly difficult-to-use program. What's the point?

      Believe it or not, some companies won't accept third-party software for fear of it violating support contracts from major vendors ("you installed third-party freeware on your system? Right then, that'll be the cause of all the problems you are seing, and we don't support that"). If it's a commercial product you can suddenly have all kinds of contracts and certifications about not breaking existing systems, and in the commercial world that's what matters most.

      All that without changing a single line of useful time-proven code.

    2. Re:Huh? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "It's not like UNIX is particularly difficult to use".

      Think about what you're saying. Yeah, if you're interested in learning, it's not a big deal. If you treat your software strictly as a tool...

      --
      May we never see th
    3. Re:Huh? by shfted! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps not... but lets say you're trying to integrate sudo to an LDAP server or some such thing, but haven't the time to research how? Why not pay the author? Time is money, and it's often cost effective to ask an outside expert.

      --
      He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
  2. Re:I'm always for contributing cash or time .. but by phaze3000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many large companies like to have commerical support for the tools they use. Large companies benefit greatly from using sudo. Large companies buy commerical sudo support. sudo author gets money.
    Everybody's happy.

    --
    Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.