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Ubuntu is switching to a Rust implementation of sudo: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-sudo-rs-Default https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-sudo

by tormeh 1y ago

Ubuntu is switching to a Rust implementation of sudo: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-sudo-rs-Default https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-sudo-rs-Default Repo here: https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Wonder why. It's not a library. But it ought to improve security in the long run.

stephenr 1y ago
> It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Well damn that's a shame. I just hate it when people let others use their work in a way they choose, that happens to be less restrictive than my own personal choices. /s of course.
- wesselbindt 1y ago
  Given that enshittification is a thing, and embrace extend extinguish is a thing, I'm inclined to agree with you there, without the /s.
- scheeseman486 1y ago
  Worked out for Linux, which remains a largely open, collaborative ecosystem. Meanwhile all the BSDs are good for are as less-good Linuxes that can be shoved into proprietary products. Google is choking out AOSP, which they can do because of Android's "less restrictive" license. Copyleft licenses are demonstrably better for open source projects in the long run. We've had enough time to prove that out now.
  - Xylakant 1y ago
    I think it's pretty reductive to boil down linux' success to the choice of license. There's governance model, development model, institutional inerta, ... - and the linux ecosystem contains tons of permissively licensed pieces of software, some of which massively contributed to its success (the once-default webserver that came with its own permissive license, the APL). Even the kernel includes APL, BSD-2 Clause and MPL'ed code. To the contrary, GNU Hurd is GPL'ed and is much less successful than the linux kernel.
  - jcranmer 1y ago
    The success of Linux over BSD has more to do with a lawsuit in the early 90's over whether or BSD infringed on Unix's source code, which made Linux the only viable open source Unix-like operating systems if you had to ask a legal department the question. Look beyond the OS, and much of the tech stack is dominated by non-copyleft open source projects. Both the major web servers--Apache and nginx--are permissively licensed, for example. Your SSL stacks are largely permissively licensed; indeed, most protocol servers seem to me to largely be permissively licensed rather than copyleft. And I should also point out a clear example where copyleft has hobbled an ecosystem: Clang and LLVM have ignited a major compiler-based ecosystem of ancillary tools for development such as language servers. The gcc response to this is... to basically do nothing, because tight integration of the compiler into other components might allow workarounds that release the precious goodness of gcc to proprietary software, and Stallman has resisted letting emacs join in this revolution because he doesn't want a dependency on non-copyleft software. An extra cruel irony is that Clang appears to be an existential threat to the proprietary EDG compiler toolchain, which would mean it took a permissive license to do what the goal of the copyleft license was in the first place: kill proprietary software.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    That is an extremely cherry-picked example. There are plenty of examples of permissively-licensed software that is very successful, and no evidence that the license choice is why Linux won.
  - stephenr 1y ago
    I'm not even going to point out the hundreds of counter examples to your argument. You clearly didn't understand my point: I'm not arguing about whether GPL is better than MIT or BSD or even SSPL/etc. My point is that if someone else chooses to release their software with less restrictions on it than I would choose, that's literally none of my business. They wrote the fucking thing, they get to choose how it's fucking licensed. Plenty of organisations (and thus people) skip using GPL licensed software due to inability or unwillingness to be bound by it's terms. I'm still waiting for the day the GPL camp says they're not going to use things like OpenSSH, Apache, Nginx, Postgres, Python, Ruby - because they're too fucking permissive.
  - spookie 1y ago
    Good take. Also note the very well thought out decision from Linus and team to keep GPLv2, it is a balancing game. In the end, if you want projects to succeed they need contributors. Unfortunately, some of them need to be reminded to play fair more than others, and in those cases the legalese helps.
Xylakant 1y ago
> It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Wonder why. I've been loosely involved in setting this up, so I can say a little: The people that funded the initial work wanted it permissively licensed. My (somethwat informed) conjecture is that they rank making things secure - even in closed source apps that now could take the code - higher than barring closed forks. It also tracks with the Rust ecosystem in general - APL or derivates are very common in that ecosystem.
throw0101b 1y ago
> Some functionality is not supported, such as […] storing config in LDAP using sudoers.ldap, and cvtsudoers. * https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs?tab=readme-ov-file#differences-from-original-sudo https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs?tab=readme... Well that makes it useless for $WORK (for now), as we use LDAP as our central policy repo (and more generally our user account store). Will have to wait until (at least) that's implemented before we can even consider it. > It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Wonder why. So it can be used distributed with fewer legal hassles.
johnisgood 1y ago
Do they not think that the switching is premature? I am pretty sure the Rust version has a lot of logic bugs that not have yet been found.
- faceplanted 1y ago
  > I am pretty sure the Rust version has a lot of logic bugs What makes you say that? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm genuinely interested.
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    Whenever a complex system is rewritten, there are a lot of bugs and regressions in it.
    - djmips 1y ago
      All the rewriters are offended by the truth.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Yup, hence why the downvotes. :( I thought it was a no-brainer, but I guess not.
        Dylan16807 1y ago
        Saying "a lot" and especially that it's still "a lot" is not a no-brainer.
        johnisgood 1y ago
        Some. More than enough. Potentially two, critical ones. Is that better?
        1y ago
Vilian 1y ago
Read the sudo license that argument don't make sense when sudo license is even more permissive
udev4096 1y ago
I am surprised that no one mentioned run0 [0] in this thread [0] - https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/devel/run0.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/devel/run0....

by tormeh 1y ago

stephenr 1y ago

> It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Well damn that's a shame. I just hate it when people let others use their work in a way they choose, that happens to be less restrictive than my own personal choices. /s of course.

wesselbindt 1y ago
Given that enshittification is a thing, and embrace extend extinguish is a thing, I'm inclined to agree with you there, without the /s.
scheeseman486 1y ago
Worked out for Linux, which remains a largely open, collaborative ecosystem. Meanwhile all the BSDs are good for are as less-good Linuxes that can be shoved into proprietary products. Google is choking out AOSP, which they can do because of Android's "less restrictive" license. Copyleft licenses are demonstrably better for open source projects in the long run. We've had enough time to prove that out now.
- Xylakant 1y ago
  I think it's pretty reductive to boil down linux' success to the choice of license. There's governance model, development model, institutional inerta, ... - and the linux ecosystem contains tons of permissively licensed pieces of software, some of which massively contributed to its success (the once-default webserver that came with its own permissive license, the APL). Even the kernel includes APL, BSD-2 Clause and MPL'ed code. To the contrary, GNU Hurd is GPL'ed and is much less successful than the linux kernel.
- jcranmer 1y ago
  The success of Linux over BSD has more to do with a lawsuit in the early 90's over whether or BSD infringed on Unix's source code, which made Linux the only viable open source Unix-like operating systems if you had to ask a legal department the question. Look beyond the OS, and much of the tech stack is dominated by non-copyleft open source projects. Both the major web servers--Apache and nginx--are permissively licensed, for example. Your SSL stacks are largely permissively licensed; indeed, most protocol servers seem to me to largely be permissively licensed rather than copyleft. And I should also point out a clear example where copyleft has hobbled an ecosystem: Clang and LLVM have ignited a major compiler-based ecosystem of ancillary tools for development such as language servers. The gcc response to this is... to basically do nothing, because tight integration of the compiler into other components might allow workarounds that release the precious goodness of gcc to proprietary software, and Stallman has resisted letting emacs join in this revolution because he doesn't want a dependency on non-copyleft software. An extra cruel irony is that Clang appears to be an existential threat to the proprietary EDG compiler toolchain, which would mean it took a permissive license to do what the goal of the copyleft license was in the first place: kill proprietary software.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  That is an extremely cherry-picked example. There are plenty of examples of permissively-licensed software that is very successful, and no evidence that the license choice is why Linux won.
- stephenr 1y ago
  I'm not even going to point out the hundreds of counter examples to your argument. You clearly didn't understand my point: I'm not arguing about whether GPL is better than MIT or BSD or even SSPL/etc. My point is that if someone else chooses to release their software with less restrictions on it than I would choose, that's literally none of my business. They wrote the fucking thing, they get to choose how it's fucking licensed. Plenty of organisations (and thus people) skip using GPL licensed software due to inability or unwillingness to be bound by it's terms. I'm still waiting for the day the GPL camp says they're not going to use things like OpenSSH, Apache, Nginx, Postgres, Python, Ruby - because they're too fucking permissive.
- spookie 1y ago
  Good take. Also note the very well thought out decision from Linus and team to keep GPLv2, it is a balancing game. In the end, if you want projects to succeed they need contributors. Unfortunately, some of them need to be reminded to play fair more than others, and in those cases the legalese helps.

Xylakant 1y ago

> It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Wonder why. I've been loosely involved in setting this up, so I can say a little: The people that funded the initial work wanted it permissively licensed. My (somethwat informed) conjecture is that they rank making things secure - even in closed source apps that now could take the code - higher than barring closed forks. It also tracks with the Rust ecosystem in general - APL or derivates are very common in that ecosystem.

throw0101b 1y ago

> Some functionality is not supported, such as […] storing config in LDAP using sudoers.ldap, and cvtsudoers. * https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs?tab=readme-ov-file#differences-from-original-sudo https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs?tab=readme... Well that makes it useless for $WORK (for now), as we use LDAP as our central policy repo (and more generally our user account store). Will have to wait until (at least) that's implemented before we can even consider it. > It's permissively licensed, unfortunately. Wonder why. So it can be used distributed with fewer legal hassles.

johnisgood 1y ago

Do they not think that the switching is premature? I am pretty sure the Rust version has a lot of logic bugs that not have yet been found.

faceplanted 1y ago
> I am pretty sure the Rust version has a lot of logic bugs What makes you say that? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm genuinely interested.
- jonathanstrange 1y ago
  Whenever a complex system is rewritten, there are a lot of bugs and regressions in it.
  - djmips 1y ago
    All the rewriters are offended by the truth.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Yup, hence why the downvotes. :( I thought it was a no-brainer, but I guess not.
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        Saying "a lot" and especially that it's still "a lot" is not a no-brainer.
        johnisgood 1y ago
        Some. More than enough. Potentially two, critical ones. Is that better?
        1y ago

Vilian 1y ago

Read the sudo license that argument don't make sense when sudo license is even more permissive

udev4096 1y ago

I am surprised that no one mentioned run0 [0] in this thread [0] - https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/devel/run0.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/devel/run0....