I don't understand what the problem is. Nobody forces you to buy a subscription. If you don't want to pay and are fine with the HTML version, then what?

But as you can imagine from the sheer amount of information on this site, this site cannot be run in our free time. It's a full time project, so people have to be paid. We love Linux and working on this site, but even we have to pay bills, you know... That's why we offer subscriptions to cover a part of our costs.

BTW, you can get a free subscription by contributing a tutorial. This also has the benefit of giving back to the community. :)