Yeah. I'm not convinced either. I do little things for various small non-profits/volunteer organizations and I've basically never had anyone bug me because it took me a bit longer to get to something than I anticipated. If I'm paying someone market rates to do a task, you can be sure that I'll be doing the "when will it be done?" thing if they get behind schedule.

My specific problem was : client claiming intellectual property over my work. If I work for free, my work is my work but somehow the claim was made.

Then you have bugs, months after delivering, and you can't say "no I won't fix it". So although you don't want to work anymore, you still have to.

Then you have new functionalities. You are burned out with the project but there is this little thing that your friend/customer really needs. And you don't want to do it, and since you've never been paid, you'll do it for free again and you'll get burned out some more... So no compensation.

Now you can argue that the problem here is not the money, but the lack for a proper contract, that'd be right. But the money question automatically brings the contract question. That's why I say : don't work for free, ever.