More importantly, it's not the same 1.5% each month. So if they're going to stay with with Gitlab, they'll need to switch over to paid, even if they're the 98.5% in other months.
Oh, that's even more devious if true! Although I'm not sure about this one, it might not be exactly the same 1.5% of users every month, but I'd guess most users CI/CD user stays relatively constant or increases at a gradual relatively constant rate, it doesn't jump up and down unstably month over month. I'd guess which users are in the 1.5% is relatively constant, right? Although you're right that the % of users in a given year that went over in any month must be somewhat more than 1.5%.
Man, I was expecting some sort of business/budget answer that I woudln't have insight into not being in this kind of business. I was not expecting straight up "misleading statistics, that number probably doesn't mean anything like it seems." :(
That said, I'm not complaining about free.