With all due respect, I think there is a confusion here about the 
word "free" in "free software".

     I agree with your first sentence only: they aren't working for us. 
But I don't think it is important for Free Software. It is important for 
their future customers, but not for Free Software because it is not Free 
Software: it's Gratuitous Software - Gratuitous for now.

     If I understand correctly, what Gnome people are doing is to try to 
take the market share of Apple and Microsoft with a gratuitous (and 
supposedly higher quality) product. "Gratuitous" but not "libre", far 
from being "libre", as it is becoming more and more clear.

     You support this mission they gave to themselve, and this is 
absolutely respectable. But their software is not designed for a free OS 
like Devuan. It has SystemD at its heart; it is not intended to work 
without it, otherwise they would provide themeselve sans-systemd 
compilation options.

     By trying to adapt Gnome to Devuan wouldn't you betray not only 
Devuan, but primarily Gnome?

     Didier