No - that's right. So if you're already on each other's roster, you don't get a subscription request. You do get a presence notification when both users are running Lantern at the same time. So it's a bit "lazy" in the sense that a new LanternFriend only gets created as soon as both sides are running Lantern, but you have to both be running Lantern eventually for the whole thing to work.

So basically with your change it'll show the friend suggestion sooner in the case where you're already on each other's rosters.