The "free" argument really depends on where you work. In most western countries the 60€-35€ per year for Webstorm represents about an hour of work, so if you spend more than an hour per year configuring VScode plugins you already lost money by not buying webstorm. The enterprise license is a bit pricier, but if 120€ per year per developer is making any kind of difference to your employer you should already be looking for work elsewhere.
Also it's not opensource in the sense that you can't build webstorm from source directly, but most of the codebase (The IntelliJ platform and many plugins) is actually opensource : jetbrains.com/opensource/
If you're hobbyist or work from a country where 60€ a year is a significant part of your salary, it makes sense to favor a free and opensource alternative. If not you should really just use whatever is the best tool for you.
The "free" argument really depends on where you work. In most western countries the 60€-35€ per year for Webstorm represents about an hour of work, so if you spend more than an hour per year configuring VScode plugins you already lost money by not buying webstorm. The enterprise license is a bit pricier, but if 120€ per year per developer is making any kind of difference to your employer you should already be looking for work elsewhere.
Also it's not opensource in the sense that you can't build webstorm from source directly, but most of the codebase (The IntelliJ platform and many plugins) is actually opensource : jetbrains.com/opensource/
If you're hobbyist or work from a country where 60€ a year is a significant part of your salary, it makes sense to favor a free and opensource alternative. If not you should really just use whatever is the best tool for you.
Also don't forget with VScode you send metrics to MS. Although you can turn it off. Your never sure how off it is.