I've asked our CEO Sid (you know, the "GitLab CEO here" guy) to chime in.
Understand, I want to believe. I want to live in a world where open core works at VC scale and over long timeframes. I'd love to run all my own projects that way, if it was possible. And who knows, maybe you will be the people to do it where everybody else failed.
It's just the available evidence suggests I don't live in that world. In my world, you have to pay money for things if you want them to last. I'd like to pay you money, but you don't want it, and that's weird.
Look at it from my POV. GitLab isn't "just" another tool for me, it's my homepage. I'm in there hours every day. I trust it to store my life's work. That's amazing! People literally kill to get that deeply embedded into their customers lives. But it's also a huge responsibility. You and I are in the honeymoon period right now, but when times get tough and we have 3 kids and a mortgage, it's going to get real.
You may not be in a position to speculate that far out, but I have to. I'm still going to need this product in five years. You might not need me.
GitLab CE is MIT licensed and will not go away in case we get acquired. Some companies (including Oracle themselves) are using GitLab CE with thousands of users (they rebranded it as Orahub, don't ask).
For our promises regarding being a good steward of CE please see https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship