Why so many people comment with 'I wish it was open-source'

Wishing something was open source and committing to build it are pretty far apart. There are examples everywhere where people have built open source alternatives for things. Understandably, there are way more people who'd like an open source version of a given program, so that sentiment is encountered more frequently.

Personally I don't believe in the business model of charging for the priviledge of running code on your own infrastructure. I also don't get involved in "pirated" software. So I would expend "I wish it was open source" to "I wish it was open source or SaaS with some compelling features".

For example I don't care that 1password is closed source because I pay them to store and let me access my passwords. I do care that Windows has a model where I would have to buy a license to run it on my own computer, so I'm happy there are open source operating systems that serve my needs. (Amongst other reasons, in today's climate I'd be highly suspicious of a "free" closed source OS)

Because proprietary software is inherently unethical. The work to write it has already been done. You're saying that the work should all be scrapped and redone, instead of the original author just choosing to release it under a better license.

I like how you guilt the guilters by asking another rhetorical question.

There's a lot of questions to unpack here, and to fully answer you I think I'll need to answer them out of order, so here goes.

> Every 'it should be open source' comment is about software already written

This is not true, it's pretty extreme hyperbole. There are indeed people who want all software to be open source though, and I think there are pretty solid arguments for that case. For one, software is a zero-margin utility. We live in an age where sending data to one another is so cheap that we treat it as free, so, no matter how you feel about it, all software is technically "free", or at least as free as the cost of copying and sending the bits to one another. Like Richard Stallman said, software wants to be free; if you set up barriers to entry, people will pirate your software and try to work around your mitigations. The most unhealthy cycle that can exist is one where proprietary software spends the majority of it's lifetime trying to fight people who want to use it instead of improving it's functionality. Open source, distributed development is the solution to this problem. Your other option is to double-down on the value of your software, which many open source advocates don't mind. Gabe Newell once called piracy a services problem, and if you're not providing a better service than what the pirates provide, you're going to be outdone by illegal distributors.

> in my opinion is meant to guilt trip the author to submit to your begging and give it to you for free.

You don't have to listen to them. If your software is worth the money, there should be no guilt involved in the first place. When people want things open sourced, they want it for a number of reasons; open source software is easier to trust, it's easier to install and modify, and it's easier to have your voice heard when you want to make a change, report an issue or have a say in the future roadmap. If all you see from that is guilt-tripping, then you must have missed the past 30 years of software development: our world runs on open source software.

> I have never seen a call to action comment that said something like 'Let's team up and write someting better and open-source'.

It's because every developer worth their salt knows that directly competing against a commercial product is an uphill battle. Commercial products have financial flexibility, they can choose to invest in their product if threatened or rest on their laurels if there's smooth sailing. In any case, open source projects entirely rely on the goodwill of hobbyists and dedicated enthusiasts. Take Photoshop for example; it's an incredibly powerful graphics tool that doesn't truly have an open-source equivalent. Why? Because it's been in development for 20-odd years, and the amount of work that would go into writing a feature-complete clone or successor would be insane. Why would people waste their time retreading ground when they could pirate it? Instead, niche tools get made; Photo manipulation has GIMP, painting has apps like Krita, image retouching has Darkroom, and so on.

The ideal solution is for software manufacturers to make their source code available at the very least, and make money from commercial users who are willing to pay, and would have taken advantage of your software anyways. The bottom line is this: you can choose to fight or embrace your community, and putting up a paywall is your first step to ostracizing people. It's up to you to navigate that.