I am not trained to be a mechanical engineer. I wanted to explore 3D printing. The usual suspects (FOSS missionaries with a deep-rooted hotly burning hate for capitalism) gave me OpenSCAD, which was okay to dick around with but QUICKLY showed its clunkiness ("compiling"... what a joke). So then I gave FreeCAD a look, because everyone said it's just like the commerical programs. It was not. Documentation and tutorials were a mess. The program itself was a mess. UX that makes you want to strangle someone.

So then I looked for free student versions of commercial software. They had a clear UI and UX, clear tutorials. It was a joy to model the parts I needed.

If I needed 3D modeling for engineering in the future, I would absolutely pay for a commercial program. FreeCAD was simply no competition. I don't know if it is now. Nor do I have any motivation whatsoever to even bother to give it another look.

If I need a license for hobbyist purposes, I'm sure some of the commercial offerings are happy to give me one for free because that would translate into commerce for them if I ever needed it professionally.