Today I was reading a thread in the Adobe support forums, where some customers were spelling out their concerns about the new cloud-based selling model of Adobe.
The point there was that as soon as you start paying the cloud subscription and you start creating some artwork with it, then you are de-facto obliged to keep paying the subscription to be able to access and make use not only of new artworks, but also all of the past artworks created with the creative cloud tools!
Once you stop paying, your files on disk become like a broken car: you have it, but you can’t do anything with it, not even just open and print them.
And then suddenly I realised the fact that for professional artists with long-term engagements, the open source model provides the best guarantee of being able to access and use their artworks during an unlimited amount of time.
Adobe’s new commercial model is kind of an extreme case, but any commercial solution could be discontinued at some point, and maybe the old software not supported anymore by new operating systems, making once again the pieces of artwork created with it simply useless.
On the other hand, if you use FL/OSS software you own not only your artwork, but also the intellectual aspects of the software you used to create your artwork. In particular, you are free to modify the software to better fit your needs, and the availability of the sources gives at least certain guarantee that the software will continue to exist and be ported to new operating systems.
Moreover, the exchange of files in native format is simplified by the fact that FL/OSS software usually is cross-platform and therefore anybody can download and install the tools at no cost, independently of the operating system they use…
Maybe you could try to stress at least part of those practical aspects of commercial vs. free solutions?