The Forjero commits prove that this is incorrect (they are still busy removing Gitea branding related things from their code). It's going to take a long time until they begin to match the Gitea momentum.
"why it needs its own distribution"
Because....Linux ? Seriously, in theory in Linux you should be able to mix and match any DE with any windows manager. In practice it doesn't work like that at all.
And i call it great music.