from a user perspective, how does paying for a "community owned" product in web3 diff from paying for a commercial (aka "shareholder owned") product?

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I think it's about voting with your dollar. 

As a user you can decide if you want to support the teams building open, collaborative things or the teams building walled gardens. 

At least in theory. 

But as we know, reality isn't that black and white.

Otherwise the difference from a user level about what the org structure behind the product looks like is very nebulous in my mind, beyond just the common OSS arguments.

Products can charge for access to their platform that is built on top of an open protocol. Ideally there would be lots of platforms, both open(free) versions and closed(paid) ones. Supporting either is supporting the open protocol behind them. 

The second half is exactly what I mean about voting with your dollar. 

From the user perspective it boils down to: 

- do you believe in open protocol as a base layer, or a walled garden model is the best path forward?

Because both support the theoretical needs of the user, it's just a philosophical difference about which is more effective at fulfilling the mandate.

if you're paying for a product, isn't it by def not "open" tho? or am I missing something.

wanting to support a team that is doing *other* great things by buying the product, I feel, is a separate question — and you can have this dynamic in both web3 & corps