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> I've also never felt compelled to use Gitlab. They literally offer no significant advantage other than being an alternative to Github.

They have exactly three advantages over Github:

1) Ability to self-host.

2) Open Source core (if you carefully avoid all the proprietary features).

3) https://xkcd.com/918/

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Sounds good on paper, but in reality you still need to pay the insane licensing fees if you need a usable product. It's like Android, I can download the source code and run it as long as I don't need extra features like a dialer and I don't mind majority of the Android apps not running on it.

If you need a truly open source solution then that would be Gitea not GitLab.

> Sounds good on paper, but in reality you still need to pay the insane licensing fees if you need a usable product.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? I ran a hosted Gitlab instance for a previous company for years with SSO, actions, container registry, on Gitlab CE. I never felt like I was missing anything.

While I'd definitely reach for Gitea if I wanted to be a purist about open source I honestly can't think of a Gitea feature that's not in Gitlab CE.

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