I don’t hate GitLab, and I do appreciate the open-core aspect of it and the competition. However, despite its popularity for businesses, I think GitHub, for better or for worse, is unquestionably the best choice in terms of reaching people (for most projects, at least; the benefits of GitHub may be less relevant or even negatives for certain projects, like particularly niche privacy/freedom related ones, or alternatives to GitHub or completely different version control systems).

I’d also like to note that GitLab has a number of the same possible concerns in the sense that it is not completely opensource, libre, and standard. There are paid features and features that are specific to GitLab that people rely on.

Perhaps things like SourceHut or CodeBerg (gitea) are better examples from that perspective. And I think those often fit the few projects that actively benefit from not being on GitHub due to those factors and the platforms’ views aligning more with potential contributors, etc.

For personal, private use and such, Gitea has been what I have used for years. I find it has fit my needs better than GitLab, but I would still be hesitant to use it for much else, other than internal repos as a company, etc.

edit: it only occurred after hitting submit that you might’ve been saying that GitLab itself is popular and successful despite not being on GitHub, not that GitLab brings the same benefits/negatives of GitHub. I’ll leave this post as is, though.