My strongly held suspicion is that it’s a form of the dunning-kruger effect. People have a lot of experience using software-A so much so that they tend to overlook just how much skill and knowledge they have accumulated with that specific software. Then when they try software-B they misconstrue their lack of knowledge with that specific software as complexity.

You just answered yourself. They’re just tools.

I’m a professional graphic designer and I will never EVER support any initiative trying to get privative support into Linux and this kind of shitty mindset from colleagues actually irks me. I will support any initiative trying to improve what we already have. You don’t even need to be a developer nor donate money to help - bug reports and translations are also a thing. That’s how we got to get high quality software like Krita, Inkscape or Blender.