That's very interesting! I wonder if there's anyone at GitLab interested in becoming an approved vendor for the US government/DOD. I also wonder if the code.mil people are interested in getting the ball rolling on that from their end.

Open source means the project can be redistributed by any user. So any user, including yourself, can re-host the project on Gitlab.

Couldn't you just fork it yourself on gitlab? Or any random person fork it?

I assume the intersection of projects that need a no-budget solution for hosting an https site and projects that belong to the US government is zero.

Am I missing something?

I mean, yes, if you have practical problems that make gitlab harder to use, don't use it. No problem at all. But it is still a perfectly valid solution for the problem the GP was trying to solve.