[rhnoble]

Since when are most designers against "true" spec work? Anytime I hear something like "the possibility of future payment and work", I run away as fast as I can. That's the kind of "spec" work the design community could do without.

Crowd-sourced spec work is another matter altogether. If a potential client points to those sites as a way of driving down your price, they're not the kind of clients you want to work with.

There's nothing wrong with taking on a high profile job for the exposure and doing it for free if you treat it like an extraneous circumstance and a business decision. But compared to people in other fields, designers are a little soft on what are acceptable payment terms, and are often taken advantage of as a result. Free = free and paid = paid, but "spec work" is a grey area that is on the whole bad for the community.