The immediate downside that I see is Internet activation, which means if Canva ever shuts down their activation servers or otherwise goes kaput, you won't be able to re-install and activate the software if needed.

I may have to stick with v2 while searching for alternatives.

Out of an abundance of caution, I went ahead and downloaded everything in my Affinity account, for both V1 and V2.

I mean, it seems doubtful that previous purchases would be taken away, especially since I can still download V1 when I have V2, but I don't want to be Adobe'd again, so I figured I'd grab everything and have it, just in case.

Only thing I didn't do is download ALL the Windows versions.  Each app has four different Windows installers.  As I don't use Windows often, I don't know the difference between them.  I can sort of tell two are for Intel and two are for ARM processors but I don't know the differences between the two Intel versions and the two ARM versions.

As far as features go, one feature I would like, to the extent that it was feasible and legally permissible to do, is to have the software be the Swiss Army knife of opening files.  In the page layout program, for example, it would be nice for it to be able to open IDML files and even INDD files, as well as Affinity Publisher files.  Heck, if you have an old file on a floppy disk with a PageMaker 2 file, if you can find a way to get that file on your modern computer, the software should be able to import that as well.  Scribus files?  Check.  Quark?  Check.  Files from some obscure desktop publishing program from 1998 that only thirty-five people worldwide still use?  Check.  Again, you'd be limited to whatever could be legally and feasibly reverse-engineered or figured out from any publicly available documentation and so on.  But it would be nice to offer users a wide-range of options so that, whatever page layout (or illustration or photo editing) software they may be switching from, they'd have a chance of opening and using their old files.

The reason I switched to Moho was because Reallusion stopped making Mac versions so I had to switch from Cartoon Animator to something else.

You're lucky they don't have a Mac version otherwise curses would be upon you for making me buy another app.

I like the television program idea.  It would have to focus on entertainment first, so people would watch it.  You'd want it to promote the applications, but you wouldn't want it to be a half hour commercial.  I wouldn't use it as a training program either.  Just demonstrate that the apps can do certain things so people are aware of the capabilities, then be sure to have documentation or videos available online for users that want to learn how to use those features.  The show would need to be entertaining and focus on that, with promoting the apps a secondary but important focus.

On open source, yes, I agree with a lot of the downsides.  The upside is that if a particular open source app does what you need, you can use it as long as you have a machine it runs on.  No Internet activation schemes, no subscriptions, nothing.  If a computer crashes, you will still be able to install and use the software if you have a compatible machine.  You won't have to worry about activation servers or logins or even where you saved the license key.

If I went the commercial route, the "power play" if you had the money would be to buy Quark.  When Adobe switched to subscriptions only, I think Quark was in the best position to take advantage of that.  And they tried.  Sorta.  But Quark seems to have this habit of shooting itself in the foot.  And then they seem to have this arrogance about them, like they haven't realized InDesign dethroned QuarkXPress years ago.  So, if you had the money, the thing to do would be to buy the company and get them in line.

But, I don't know that I would even try that.  You'd probably have to change the corporate culture there and that might be a big challenge if they haven't changed by now.

Instead, there are about four or five companies I would buy.  I'm not going to name them because, on the 0.01% chance I'd ever actually have this opportunity, I want to keep my options open.  They are all small companies.  One has a page layout program.  It's only been sporadically updated in the past decade or more, so it would need to be updated.  But, if I had the chance and had the money, I mean, I'd buy the company today and worry about finding programmers to update it later.  It has a small--probably very small--user base so there's that.  Also has a good history and a good name.  So lots to build off of.  Then there is another small company with a vector illustration program and another with an image editor.  The vector illustration program hasn't been updated for a few years but the graphics editor is regularly updated.  Also, there is another company with an app that has vector drawing features and that app is regularly updated.  So that would be another option for an illustration program.  So, all that provides a starting base.  You'd have a page layout program along the lines of InDesign/Publisher, an illustration program like Illustrator/Designer and a graphics editor like Photoshop/Photo.

Then the work would be in updating them and getting them to work together so you can have a seamless graphics suite.

As a sidenote, the forums being made read-only but left open also leaves open the perhaps slim possibility they could be opened again in the future.

I couldn't even access them on Discord.  The link said the invitation had expired and I saw no other way to get in.  And, after the news of Discord's data leak/hack, I'm not sure I'd want to sign up there anyway.