They never made the majority of their money from subscribers. They made it from ads. And ad revenue has been under heavy assault of late, while publishing has been moving increasingly to the internet and away from the dead tree version. Your example does not really support your statement.
It absolutely supports the statement: where does the majority of gitlab's money come from?
Their strategy page (https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/) suggests that these subscriptions, at least for some time, will be a small part of the revenue (enterprise customers being the larger revenue source).
So with these subscriptions being a supplemental revenue source, it's pretty apt.
Have an upvote for supporting your POV, but I am not convinced that detail makes it apt.
Publications made money primarily from ads. A subscriber base was valuable for being able to prove audience size. Then ad costs were tied to that. Having enterprise customers plus individual customers is fundamentally a different model.
They never made the majority of their money from subscribers. They made it from ads. And ad revenue has been under heavy assault of late, while publishing has been moving increasingly to the internet and away from the dead tree version. Your example does not really support your statement.