Gitea was taken from a community run project to an corporate owned one to allow for an open core future. Currently there's been no actions taken that negatively affect the open project, but the door is now open for a "This isn't working for our company, we're now going to SSPL" style move in the future.

I am a community member of the Gitea TOC, and there will be no open core model.

Gitea will remain fully open source with no tiers.

The community TOC also has advantages in any such voting where something may negatively affect the OS project, although as you mentioned that hasn't happened yet, and I don't expect it will.

Currently the fork is simple rebranding with a few small changes here and there.

Both of them will give you nearly the same experience, and they are a soft fork so all Gitea changes will be available.

I'm biased as a community member of the Gitea TOC, so I'd of course recommend Gitea.