You gotta realize that designing stuff takes time. This means that there's a bunch of designers working hard for a prize that will most likely not be there. This isn't like OSS contributions where patches are integrated, this is direct competition for compensation, in the form of a spec work contest.
Get over your hostility and either do something fun on the internets, or don't.
Aaron doesn't work on the off-chance that someone will accept his work.
There aren't multiple people doing exactly the same thing as Aaron - completing for a single chance.
My understanding is http://www.no-spec.com/ is a reaction to businesses exploiting designers through spec work (if that's wrong, please enlighten me). There is no one exploiting anyone here, just a developer who would like his open source, zero revenue, app to look presentable.
A designer who only opens photoshop for cash probably won't be interested, but a designer who also loves to design in their free time may.
In that way, Aaron and a potential designer may very well be similar. They don't treat their craft as a day job, but more as a lifestyle.
This makes sense.
If you have a competition - the amount of effort expended is far greater, and much of that combined effort will have been spent for nothing.
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There's a commonly held assumption that design takes only a little bit of effort, and that it's so remarkably fun that little or no reward is required by its practitioners.
This assumption is wrong, and even if it wasn't .. what's the point in creating a design that stands a very good chance of not being used?
However, that's not what competitions are designed to provide. This isn't a corporate productivity debate.
Competitions generate excitement, stroke entrant's competitive nature, provide some openness (in cases where the public participates), and promotes more out of the box thinking.
You see it all the time with sports, the increasing number of hackathons (where yes, developers, designers, and others spend X hours building something nonstop for zero guaranteed reward), government initiatives (challenge.gov), etc.
Religiously calling all competitions/contests bad because there are some companies which exploit the characteristics of a challenge is a bit naive.
Note: I recognize that design is time intensive and not always fun. Hell, it's the same thing for developers.
I understand what you're saying - but maybe we'll have to agree to disagree.
Competitions too often seem like an excuse for cheap labour.
More to the oss point, if you want to really treat this in an oss sort of way, then fork the project's theme or what have you, make skinning it a sort of project people would actually give their time to rather than dangling a carrot.
I think the majority issue here is that most people don't mind giving up their time for something they care about, but most people don't like being commoditized.