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diff --git a/docs/HISTORY.md b/docs/HISTORY.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f728f62 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/HISTORY.md @@ -0,0 +1,77 @@ +A Brief History of Sudo +======================= + +## The Early Years + +Sudo was first conceived and implemented by Bob Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer +around 1980 at the Department of Computer Science at SUNY/Buffalo. It ran on +a VAX-11/750 running 4.1BSD. An updated version, credited to Phil Betchel, +Cliff Spencer, Gretchen Phillips, John LoVerso, and Don Gworek, was posted to +the net.sources Usenet newsgroup in December of 1985. + +## Sudo at CU-Boulder + +In the Summer of 1986, Garth Snyder released an enhanced version of sudo. +For the next 5 years, sudo was fed and watered by a handful of folks at +CU-Boulder, including Bob Coggeshall, Bob Manchek, and Trent Hein. + +## Root Group Sudo + +In 1991, Dave Hieb and Jeff Nieusma wrote a new version of sudo with an +enhanced sudoers format under contract to a consulting firm called "The Root +Group". This version was later released under the GNU public license. + +## CU Sudo + +In 1994, after maintaining sudo informally within CU-Boulder for some time, +Todd C. Miller made a public release of "CU sudo" (version 1.3) with bug +fixes and support for more operating systems. The "CU" was added to +differentiate it from the "official" version from "The Root Group". + +In 1995, a new parser for the sudoers file was contributed by Chris Jepeway. +The new parser was a proper grammar (unlike the old one) and could work with +both sudo and visudo (previously they had slightly different parsers). + +In 1996, Todd, who had been maintaining sudo for several years in his spare +time, moved distribution of sudo from a CU-Boulder ftp site to his domain, +courtesan.com. + +## Just Plain Sudo + +In 1999, the "CU" prefix was dropped from the name since there had been no +formal release of sudo from "The Root Group" since 1991 (the original +authors now work elsewhere). As of version 1.6, Sudo no longer contains any +of the original "Root Group" code and is available under an ISC-style +license. + +In 2001, the sudo web site, ftp site, and mailing lists were moved from +courtesan.com to the sudo.ws domain (sudo.org was already taken). + +## LDAP Integration + +In 2003, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company contributed code written by +Aaron Spangler to store the sudoers data in LDAP. These changes were +incorporated into Sudo 1.6.8. + +## New Parser + +In 2005, Todd rewrote the sudoers parser to better support the features that +had been added in the past ten years. This new parser removes some +limitations of the previous one, removes ordering constraints and adds +support for including multiple sudoers files. + +## Quest Sponsorship + +In 2010, Quest Software began sponsoring Sudo development by hiring +Todd to work on Sudo as part of his full-time job. This enabled +the addition of I/O logging, the plugin API, the log server, +additional regression and fuzz tests, support for binary packages +and more regular releases. + +## Present Day + +Sudo, in its current form, is maintained by: + + Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@sudo.ws> + +Todd continues to enhance sudo and fix bugs. |