I am running gnome-terminal 2.28.2, which is the latest version in Archlinux's repos at the time of this writing.

* Steps to reproduce *

From a clean configuration (after removing ~/.gconf/apps/gnome-terminal), the following steps reproduce the issue for me:

1. Open the Profiles dialogue ("Edit" menu -> "Profiles..." item).

2. Select "Default" from the list of profiles, and click the "Edit" button to open the 'Editing Profile "Default"' window.

3. Make no changes in the profile edit window, but instead, close it.

4. Mouseover the "Default" list item. The displayed name for the "Default" profile refreshes on mouseover, and changes to an empty string.

5. Select the now-empty name from the list and click "Edit" again. All of the options which take string values (e.g. Profile name, Select-by-word characters, Initial title, Custom command) are now empty. (Non-string values, e.g. booleans, are not affected.)

6. Enter anything into any of the string fields, then close the profile edit dialog. They are set to empty strings again.

* Other notes *

I have also tested entering the settings with gconf-editor (for the keys in /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default) instead of gnome-terminal's own config dialogs. The values are saved successfully if written with gconf-editor, but repeating the above steps causes them to be lost again.

This behaviour also hold true for any profile, not only "Default".