At the very least, the main guy behind this is pat-s who was originally a WoodpeckerCI dev and has been in and around Codeberg/Forgejo/Woodpecker for a while so I trust he knows his stuff. His work on CrowCI (Woodpecker fork) has been great.

I also swear I've read that same "buy a hetzener dedi install forgejo" etc etc line before, but maybe it's just you're not the only person cynical about the situation.