<P> Robert Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer wrote the original subsystem around 1980 at the Department of Computer Science at SUNY / Buffalo . As of 2018 the current version is under active development, maintained by OpenBSD developer Todd C. Miller and distributed under a ISC - style license . </P> <P> In November 2009 Thomas Claburn, in response to concerns that Microsoft had patented sudo, characterized such suspicions as overblown . The claims were narrowly framed to a particular GUI, rather than to the sudo concept . </P> <P> Unlike the command su, users supply their personal password to sudo if necessary . After authentication, and if the configuration file permits the user access, the system invokes the requested command . By default the user's password can be retained through a grace period (15 minutes per pseudo terminal), allowing the user to execute several successive commands as the requested user without having to provide a password again . </P> <P> sudo may be configured to log each command run . When a user attempts to invoke sudo without being listed in the configuration file, an exception indication is presented to the user indicating that the attempt has been recorded . The root user will be alerted via mail and an entry is recorded in the system log . </P>

What does the sudo command do on mac