Who introduced the 'With great power comes great responsibility' message that appears the first time you run sudo?
Many Unix-based operating systems come with the 'sudo' package, which allows users to temporarily run commands with superuser, or 'root,' privileges. The first time you run sudo, a message appears informing you of several precautions. An expert on the Q&A site Stack Exchange has answered the question about the author of this message.
history - When was the famous 'sudo warning' introduced? Under what background? By whom? - Retrocomputing Stack Exchange
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12521/when-was-the-famous-sudo-warning-introduced-under-what-background-by-whom
A Brief History of Sudo | Sudo
https://www.sudo.ws/about/history/
The first time you run sudo, you’ll see the following message.
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
(You've probably received a typical lecture from your system administrator, which usually boils down to three points:
#1) Respect the privacy of others.
(Respect the privacy of others)
#2) Think before you type.
(Think before you type)
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.
(With great power comes great responsibility)
As far as can be seen in the version control system of sudo, which is still in use in 2025, two of the three notes were added in June 1993. The author of the commit in question is Todd C. Miller, who is still maintaining sudo as of 2025, but Miller is not the author, as he simply added source code that was already created to the version control system.
Since the source code history cannot be confirmed, it is not possible to definitively determine the author. However, based on
the history of sudo
, it is highly likely that the message was created by either Bob Coggeshall, who developed sudo around 1980, or Evi Nemeth, who was the computer facilities manager at the University of Colorado Boulder in the 1980s.Although the intention and background behind the creation of the message are unknown, at the time, messages similar to those of sudo were often displayed when logging into academic systems.
Of the three points, the third, 'With great power comes great responsibility,' was first added as a patch to Red Hat's sudo package in June 2002, and was added to the original sudo repository in January 2004. The commit message indicates that it is a quote from Spider-Man's Ben Parker, but there are many similar phrases that have existed since around the time of Christ , so Spider-Man is not the original.
By default, the sudo message is only displayed the first time the command is run, but if you want it to be displayed every time, you can
write
'lecture = 'always'' in the sudo configuration file '/etc/sudoers'.Related Posts:
