[itake]

Can you elaborate how this is exploiting?

I am a SWE engineer with photography as a hobby.

If a tv show contacted me to do a wedding shoot, I'd be excited for the coverage and I wouldn't feel exploited since doing shoots is fun for me.

I could see how there are parallels to the "background actor" industry where, by law, you have to pay all of the talent on screen, even if its a nominal amount and the actor would of worked for free.

But that doesn't the case here?

[pavel_lishin]

I hope you can see the difference between doing something for free when it's your hobby, vs. doing something for free when it's your career.

If a TV show contacted you do create a web app, would you do that work for free? Would you give up other opportunities to get paid to do so?

[tpmx]

> If a TV show contacted you do create a web app, would you do that work for free? Would you give up other opportunities to get paid to do so?

So, say no? (I've done that a couple of times in similar situations.)

[itake]

> would you do that work for free?

No, because it is not fulfilling.

I do use my career skills to teach under privileged students how to program for free.

[D13Fd]

I totally agree.

I too have a photography hobby (or did, pre-kids). I release everything I do that's any good via Creative Commons attribution-only licenses. My pics have shown up on articles in USA Today, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and many many other places. Plus they are in a number of free and paid wallpaper apps. People sell prints of them on Amazon. I can go buy a cup with one of my photos on it right now. I was even interviewed for a small Discovery Channel video.

I think it's awesome. As long as they stick my name on there and follow the terms of the license, more power to them.

I've had people (especially in the local photographer's club) tell me that I'm being horrible and helping to kill the professional photography industry etc. But in my view there is just nothing wrong with giving away your creative output in exchange for credit.

[stuff4ben]

Because you're a hobbyist and there's probably no chance in hell they'd contact you. This is this persons job and they look to be a professional. But imagine if Google or Microsoft or <insert whatever tech co> decided to ask you to do a software project for them for no money but you'd get exposure, would you do it? If so, I have a shit ton of work that I'll give you while collecting my salary and give you "exposure"...

[djitz]

Big organizations do that all the time. They call them hackathons.

[itake]

They also have OSS projects like ES that accept free labor