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This is how RMS has made a living for 2 decades. One advantage to attending these is being able to briefly talk to the speaker afterwards if they stick around, like asking RMS about his papers in the 1970s about propagation, dependencies and backtracking for building large-scale symbolic systems.

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Unless it has changed recently, RMS asks for all his fees to be paid, and does not ask for a fee but makes it clear that one is appreciated and that if no speaking fee is paid, he's essentially given the speech for free. My experience is that organisations and people inviting him to speak do pay him, but in the thousands of dollars, similarly to what you'd pay a high end consultant to spend a day or two to travel and work ; not high tens of thousand and certainly not hundreds of thousands dollars!

I meant "asks for all his expenses to be paid", not fees.

Don't people basically see this as a willing donation to RMS / FSF? (which reminds me that I need to make my FSF donation for the year)

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