Comment by yuliyp

I gave up reading the article about halfway when they hadn't mentioned at all how the program committee of the conference is assembled. That corporations sponsor academic conferences is natural: there are a lot of reasons it's useful: recruiting, networking, cooperating with other researchers, etc. And they're the part of those scientific communities that has the spare money to be able to provide sponsorships. That the article spent so long trying to convince me that this was sinister is bizarre.