When GNOME initially adopted GitLab, I know some features were made open-source by GitLab to accommodate the needs of open-source projects like GNOME.
So maybe GNOME could create a wish-list and ask GitLab to provide more features in its open-source offering.
In my case, I’m uncomfortable making my GitLab profile fully public, because everyone would be able to follow my moves, see when I’m active and when I’m not, etc. I feel more comfortable mentally-wise to make it harder to “follow me”. On the other hand I would like people to discover my personal repos.
Currently the setting is an all-or-nothing:
Private profile
Don’t display activity-related personal information on your profile.
If you check that setting, everything is hidden. What I’m asking is a finer-grained set of settings to make some parts private, and other parts public (like the list of personal repos).
Maybe GNOME can - as an organization - do some pressure on GitLab to have additional features. A wish-list could be created and then try to convince GitLab to do something about it. I don’t know if it’s still the case today that GNOME and GitLab often communicate.