> However, considering they make money out of private installs of gitlab, it makes sense to keep gitlab.com as an eat-your-own-dog-food-at-scale environment.

Depends on how they bill.

If they bill on a few private installs while giving unlimited storage & projects for free on the cloud, they're setting up themselves for bankruptcy.

Gotta take care of the accounting. Having an unsustainable pricing is a classic mistake of web companies.