Is it deemed off-topic to ask how come that many commercial companies rely on a specific freeware software?

Question

I'd like to ask the reason why many commercial software companies are using a freeware tool for their product lifecycle by giving the company which produces this tool an advantage and the power to put a commercial license on it / restrict its usage to commercial ends.

Is such a question off-topic for programmers.stackexchange.com? At first I would say no, but I decided to ask here on meta before posting it.

Answer 1

Such a question is likely to be closed for being primarily opinion based.
Although subjective questons are welcome here to a certain degree, there are limits. See also Good subjective, Bad subjective.

The problem with your question, as I interpret it from the characterisation that you gave, is that it calls for speculation and not for expertise in the subject matter.