"Opinion Thirty years is a big ol' chunk of anyone's life. It can take you from new parent to new grandparent, from bright young thing to mid-life crisis, and from shaver to graybeard. In the case of Todd C Miller, one thing hasn't changed. He's been the sole maintainer of the Linux sudo utility. He's not giving up just yet, but he needs help and no help has come."
"Although he's blessed with world-class nominative determinism - "On your tod" is British slang for "on your own," and milling C is exactly what he's been doing all these years - nobody needs a life sentence in solitary, keeping a vital component like sudo secure and up to date. Nor can core utilities rely on such devotion. Even the most heroic, talented, glorious human being in that position remains a single point of failure for oh so many reasons."
"There are three factors here that threaten to tip this aspect of Linux life into its own mid-life crisis. The original cadre of developers who glued the GNU core utilities onto the brash new Linux kernel are getting older, and any number of life changes from incipient boredom through to alien abduction will eventually pluck them away. Then there's the massive change in status of Linux from 1996 to today. Finally, there's nothing except ad-hoc happenstance guiding the next generation of maintainers."
Todd C Miller has been the sole maintainer of the sudo utility for thirty years and continues to maintain it while requesting help. Relying on one person makes a critical system component a single point of failure. The original developers of GNU core utilities are aging and life changes can remove maintainers unpredictably. Linux's status has shifted from hobby project to major infrastructure, requiring different motivations and organizational models to maintain core tools. There is currently no structured path for recruiting or guiding the next generation of maintainers. Cultural changes and institutional support are necessary to ensure long-term security and continuity.
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