ok, this might suck. We are on bronze right now and yes there where some things in silver that would have been nice to have it was never worth the costs per user to upgrade (especially because a lot of features already in bronze are not things we actually use or need), this might mean we either switch to free or abandon gitlab if there is an alternative.
What are the things in bronze you did need/want, vs free?
For me: - issue weights - iterations - multiple issue assignees - issue dependencies
We did evaluate silver (now premium), and it wasn't worth it. We will probably upgrade, but this is a 5x increase on the price, and as a long term contributor of Gitlab, this does definitely make me angry.
>issue dependencies
FWIW these are available in Gitea, along with some other Gitlab features that require payment.
It's a much more lightweight alternative, though.