I don't think that's true. Companies that persist in giving away their product have only one route to safety: an exit. A company that charges for its product has an immediate extension of its runway, corporate credibility and both of those add up to being around longer than if they're free.

Transitioning from free to paid can backfire if you depend on the free users for some critical way and gitlab is leaving all that untouched.

They're charging for extras such as support and CI minutes, both of which are features that usually will be of use to corporate customers.

All in all I see this as a positive move for gitlab in the long run, lack of revenue streams was something that bothered me and made me wonder about their long term viability. For me at least those worries are now gone.