Gitlab has introduced a five-user limit for free groups

There's no mention on "Why changes", it's a red flag to me.

Probably because it's a publicly traded company that needs to please its shareholder.

I honestly believe that what we are seeing is the realisation that money and growth isn't infinite and companies need to return to actually turn a profit, not just grow revenue. That's why we're seeing Reddit, Imgur, Gitlab, Meta, Twitter and others implement changes in rapid succession. It not even that I completely disagree with their choices, I just wonder why a dumb ass like myself who knows nothing of business was able to see broken business models years in advance, while Wall Street and Silicon Valley couldn't... Or did they just not care?

They came right out and told you: nobody cared if nine out of ten investments were a total loss, provided the one had enough juice to make up for it. And, "juice" is an extremely vague term here: it could mean profitability, but given that there was so much money sloshing around, usually it just meant that the stock price jumped enough for investors to cash out - but that stock price was not necessarily tied to any tangible performance, much of the time.

The real giveaway though, was the fact that stock dividends - you know, the thing that historically you buy stock for - are basically unheard of among all but the biggest companies in tech (and even unheard of among some of those). We have now an entire generation of leaders in tech for whom profitability has been this kind of abstract notion they didn't have to think about much, which explains why they all seem so ham-fisted now that they're being forced to.