[crusso]

There is no reason why those companies can't pay a basic internship salary

You don't know that. Maybe the company is a totally new idea being started on a shoe string that can't afford to pay much of anything.

Maybe the product or project is a "what the hell" kind of project that doesn't really have any revenue associated with it but won't be even attempted without some free or mostly free time.

Where would the open source community be without people contributing to it for free?

Yours is the kind of thinking that leads to the ever-increasing minimum wage, which sounds great at first blush but whose unintended consequence is the killing off of whimsical tough-to-start or high risk ventures while also denying real experience to workers who lack the job skills needed to actually be productive at the required minimum wage.

[chasing]

"How can I possibly start my whimsical high-risk venture if I have to pay my employees enough so they can afford food and shelter? Why does everything have to be stacked in favor of those greedy minimum wage earners?"

[crusso]

Always with the us-vs-them mentality. Maybe both sides are risking something. Maybe both sides have something to gain? Those ideas are hard to consider when you only have one perspective in mind.

[RuggeroAltair]

I agree and open source is a completely different thing, in facts someone here even suggested that as a better option than working for a company for free.

But honestly, you are talking about a different thing.

If you can't afford to pay much of anything it's fine, as long as, for example, you give me a bunch of shares which would be worth nothing now, but something in case you become a billionaire.

But if you don't want to give anything back for my work, then I tend to think that you are trying to use my time.

Of course there may be a million exceptions to this, and there are. But in my experience those where the exceptions, and the usual case was just a way to get free labor.