Yupp, blame my FOSS-fundamentalism and communism for being here early - but I still took a looooong break after first trying it out for a bit. Am elated it managed to grow a community since then.
The short answer: It made me interested in non-commercial alternatives. The fact that the main devs are communists in their own right (even though not necessarily of the same school of thought as myself, but close enough), certainly helped, too.
BTW, just in case you are concerned about that - they are commited to free software principles and the software they develop here is certainly politically agnostic, and they can't and won't keep anyone from hosting their own instances with their own focus or forking the software in the worst case.