Excellent post by Troy Sobotka explaining why designers should collaborate with Free Software projects and stop responding to contests:

“We need a round table interaction where literature, art, design, philosophy, psychology, and sociology can be engaged. We need a cross pollination of creative fields and studies. We need to have developer minds and creative minds becoming passionate and excited about alternate perceptions of the future”

“The very notion of Libre / Free software holds cooperation and community with such high regard you would think that we would be visionary leaders regarding the means and methods we use to collaborate. We are not. We seem to suffer from a collision of unity with diversity. How can we more greatly create a world of legitimate discussion regarding art, design, aesthetic, music, and other such diverse fields when we are so stuck on how much more consistent a damn panel looks with tripe 22 pixel icons of a given flavour?”

http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2010/10/spec-work-and-contests-part-two.html