I would like to mention I believe it’s a very bad idea to sell business to the Google, please.
After reading: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/google-backed-software-developer-gitlab-explores-sale-sources-say-2024-07-17/
Unless you want to kill the project, since that is what Google might do. And if not, Google will potentially close the community edition.
I’m really panicking. Should I search for an alternative?
It’s probably no different than Microsoft having Github to be honest.
As @iwalker says, Microsoft owns github so it’s not surprising if Google wants to owns a competitor.
I do not think it’s more likely that Google will close the community edition than GitLab (the current company, that is also - very clearly - in it to make money) doing it. But the code behind the community edition is open source, so Google can’t (legally) remove that from existence and I hope that someone will step up and maintain a fork if it is announced that only the enterprise edition will be developed going forward.
It’s also relatively not-painful to self-host these days - if you can afford the privilege.
But self-hosting requires that there is something to host.
There are already devices that operate (almost) like appliances that support installing/running GitLab, their sales might increase if people start having to host their own.