If your IP (and possible your browser) looks “suspicious” or has been used by other users before, you need to add additional information for registration on gitlab.com, which includes your mobile phone number and possibly credit card information. Since it is not possible to contribute or even report issues on open source projects without doing so, I do not think any open source project should use this service until they change that.
Screenshot: https://i.ibb.co/XsfcfHf/gitlab.png
Even Github does not require any personal information, so there are certainly other ways.
And Github is Microsoft who need those capabilities for basically every other website they sell.
Whereas gitlab is REALLY good software with… a website nobody ever really asked for but that still needs to exist to sell people that software.
This comes up with a lot of services. I think everyone lost their god damned minds when overwatch added phone verification?
Like, I don’t like it. But I have friends who ahve had to deal with harassment campaigns against their products (or persons) and the like and get why you would do what, on the surface, is a pretty trivial ask as a way to remove sock puppets.