Funding or not, Miller expects sudo-rs to become the next generation of the tool in coming years.

"Ubuntu is already shipping sudo-rs as the default sudo command in their latest versions," Miller told us. "I've been in contact with the people working on sudo-rs since the project started and I trust them to do right by the sudo user base."

Projects don't last forever, and when they inevitably end, it's an opportunity to switch to something newer and hopefully better. Sudo coming to an end, if it does, will just force people onto alternatives.

Being open source, sudo will always exist, whether someone else wants to maintain it, fork it, use it as-is, or just reference it. It's because it's open source that it can serve a purpose even beyond its EOL.

Anyway, sudo's not dead yet, so there's still plenty of time for people to look at what's out there. Some distros have already moved to, or are considering moving to, alternatives like sudo-rs, so I'd expect that to continue.