Are they mad? It's not 'a' PDF - it's a series of PDFs (including some files that only contain adverts) linked by an HTML page, all wrapped up in a 127MB zip downloaded over bittorrent.
Huge PDFs are not fun to play with, so I don't see this as a particularly heinous thing to do. Bear in mind as well, that this is free content - you get what you pay for!
IMHO, I've been a subscriber to LXF since before issue 1 (I recall there was a teaser issue) and it's still as interesting to read as it's always been. Sure, some months cover more subjects that I have no interest in, but there's always something in there worth scanning through - and the general quality of the articles has remained fairly high.
I've tried the other Linux mags on the market, but I found most of them somewhat less accessible which meant that I was only really interested in reading in-depth those articles where I already knew quite a bit about the topic. The rest were just too hard-going.
You pays yer money and you takes yer choice!
Peter.