Gitorious is dead - acquired by GitLab

"Hey, at least you can still get the community edition for free (as in freedom and beer) and run it without hassle."

And prop up GitLab B.V.'s proprietary software business in the process. Their idea is very clear: Maybe you'll become a paying customer for the proprietary version later on. Since they only get money when people do, that is clearly what they're betting on. At the very least even if you don't it's free advertising so maybe someone else will even if not you.

"The reason these companies do an "enterprise edition" is to give reassurance to big companies who want support contracts and have code tailored to them. Its a win-win as this funds the core software so the project can stay alive and appeal to both the FLOSS and enterprise audiences."

I have no objection to that in principal - Companies can make all the support contracts they want and have people pay them as much money as they can get, as long as what people get in the end is free software. It used to be but it later became proprietary. I wish it still were free.

I'm not a developer. I'm slowly trying to learn some skills in my free time so perhaps I can contribute to a project even in a small way in the future. I am however a strong supporter of the FaiF movement. And therefore, feel this move does not help our (?) cause.

"While originally itself open source software, SourceForge was commercialized as v2.5 prototype code and eventually relicensed under a proprietary software license as SourceForge Enterprise Edition. The original codebase was forked by the GNU Project as Savane. It was also later forked as GForge by one of the SourceForge programmers, and then GForge was itself forked as FusionForge by three GForge developers." - (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge_Enterprise_Edition)

... but you are right there are alternatives to Gitorious out there - jxself provided a quick synopsis above.