Sudo Began on a VAX at SUNY Buffalo Around 1980 and Passed Through Several Teams Before Todd Miller Took It Public in 1994
The sudo project's own history traces the command from Bob Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer's first version at Buffalo through Usenet, CU-Boulder and The Root Group to Todd C. Miller, who still maintains it.
The first sudo “ran on a VAX-11/750 running 4.1BSD.” That machine is long gone, but the idea of running one command with someone else’s privileges, then dropping back, stuck.
The next step happened on Usenet. “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.” That made it something other sites could pick up.
“In the Summer of 1986, Garth Snyder released an enhanced version of sudo.” Then it moved west: “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.”
The longer arc is a tool that started as one department’s convenience, got passed along by Usenet posts and university staff, and became a standard part of Unix administration. Most of the names on that page never became famous for it.
