Why do you believe this? My project uses self-hosted gitlab (ancient version) and I frankly have a very hard time seeing it as anything other than infrastructure. Maybe we just don't push our use of gitlab a lot (to be fair, we don't push it at all).
GitLab's co-founder and CEO goes into the details in this talk: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/commercial-open-sourc...
To your point on your usage - it's certainly possible that folks use GitLab in different ways and that our thesis does not apply to each use case.
We detail the differences between infrastructure and applications in link #2 in my previous comment. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve that section, I'd encourage you to create a MR to update the page. Just click the "Edit in Web IDE" link at the bottom to get started. :)
Our Open Core business model is part of our 3 year strategy [1] and something I consider one of our key strengths. As a member of the Community Relations team, I may be a bit biased. :)
We acknowledge the risk of "Fork and Commoditize" [2] on our list of biggest risks but believe that risk is reduced because we're application software instead of infrastructure software.
1 - https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#2-build-on-our-op... 2 - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/biggest-risks/#....