A distro making your project the default doesn't give you any responsibility.

I fundamentally agree with you. I don't think responsibility is quite the right word. But if they don't seem to care about a massive portion of their users, why are they building gnome at all?

I agree that responsibility is the wrong word, but I've also noticed there's certainly some form of expectation, social responsibility, or care that other projects have and gnome has always lacked. When I started using Linux it was the desktop I liked the most, but some of the choices seem almost hostile or intentionally designed to drive current users away, and unlike most other projects I've used, I've never seen them listen or make improvements based on any feedback from users.