while it is true that creating a tool like this consumes resources and you can't just live from nothing, I also understand where this is coming from.

I'd put it differently though. It is not the fact that it is a priced tool, its the fact, that nowadays people rarely make something to purely solve a problem for the community, but instead they think about how they can make more money by milking the designer community.

I said it several times before, it has become a bit of a cycle. The young designer/developer starts out in the industry, makes some client work or does work for themselves, like making a web project for this gaming guild, after a certain time they get very frustrated because their vision and craft are not appreciated by the people they work with and after all, what we as a community portrait always makes it look like all we make is perfect things, even though that is not the least bit true. So they decide to "make a product", because that is always more motivational in the long term and they get to make decisions by themselves and only have to deal with direct end customer feedback. And oh surprise, because all you hear nowadays is how you need to make something that is authentic to yourself, they interpret it as "you need to make something that you already know about", so they target themselves, designer/developer. And so it goes on.

The thing is though:

• no money in it == evolving slowly and kind of crappy at some small points that will start to add up, but its free and it mostly will evolve organically
• money in == evolving quickly and will be mostly well done, besides the things that it'll miss, those will be added in a patch along the road, but it will be determined by the market and the flow of money and attention.

As soon as there is money involved, you will need to get it back somehow, unless you work on donations.