Richard Stallman speaker visit guidelines

He uses wget to get pages because he's on the road almost constantly. His life is in his email, and he tries to respond to all of it, but gets a TON, and responds pretty quickly. He does this partly because he's using his own email client and his own editor, both of which he's been using for 35 years or so. In Emacs he has a ton of abbrevs for various common responses.

Because he travels all the time, he has a lot of experience of what works and what doesn't work, and is trying to make things as smooth as possible.

45 minutes of photos after a speech isn't his ego, its him asking the organizers to make sure they have plenty of time after the event for all the people who'll want him to sign a book or their laptop, or talk to him about free software.

I went to Brazil with him on a trip and I'm pretty sure there were photos and signing and things for a few hours after. We had to have a dedicated photographer to cope with the sheer number of people.

This is a guy who travels so much, someone bought him a parrot as a gift because they thought he'd like it, and it forced him to ask people to not buy animals as gifts. That's the scale of what he's dealing with.

In his capacity as travelling speaker, RMS is essentially a performer, and all major performers have lists like this. They have to. They are putting on a show that requires a great deal of time, effort, and planning. If you are inviting them, then they are doing it because you want them to. You do not know what it takes to put on their show. They do. So they are telling you. The audience may react to them in ways you do not expect. They know how audiences react. So they are letting you know how to prepare for it.

Yes, it makes them look like prima donnas. But that is not why the lists exist.

That said, it is clear that the reality of RMS as primary spokesman for software freedom, has some serious problems. Respectful disagreement is not something we find him doing very often. He has been seen to explode at people over minor issues. He leads a movement that has some of the characteristics of a cult, in which his personal preferences are enshrined as policy.

Most tragically, he has created an atmosphere in which supporting software freedom, but having disagreements with RMS, is a difficult position to take. I think this hurts the cause considerably.