I'd rather not run software made by convicted child molesters
I get that sentiment, but what would you want to happen here, should he have just stayed in prison? Should he end up in a ditch somewhere? At some point reintegration into society needs to be happen, and i sure as hell think contributing to FOSS is a good deal better for everyone.
Plenty of people have been banned from GNOME, if you feel like he committed an infraction you're more than welcome to report the issue. But i doubt you'll find sympathy just clutching your pearls over his past crimes that have nothing to do with FOSS.
So he's still active, I guess your witch-hunt will continue then.
GNOME is not a single entity, it's hundreds of developers - it doesn't assign things to people. It looks like he's part of the releng team which gives him some responsibilities. The status quo will likely continue as he hasn't committed any infraction, though some people will refuse to work with him i guess.
Nice, that's one default i won't have to change anymore.
I don't believe he's around anymore, he probably started using an alias once people "canceled" him. This is the internet after all, you're one pseudonym away from a fresh start.
GNOME doesn't really employ developers, it's mostly unpaid contributors with the occasional contract work. Canonical is the one that employed him - and no longer does.
Michael Jackson was acquitted every time though, all signs point to him being slandered and the media doing what they do best - fucking up someone's life over accusations.
Every distro has problems, i don't really see anything troubling in your post: you're using a macbook which is very much not a standard linux installation and as always on linux - ymmv.
After the first update malarkey I changed it, but apparently that only lasted to the next update...
You probably "changed it" wrong, iirc some files are automatically generated and those aren't the ones you want to edit.
Imagine not using caps lock as escape, this is obviously meant for the '_' snake key.
Then you just revoke the keys and the content creator gets burned, they're choosing to be victims here.
GNOME stopped supporting x11 this year, and prior to that the x11 session was in maintenance mode for years - wayland has been the default since 2017.