[no subject]

Thus, one can safely say that GNOME is widely-used or widespread. 

Next, GNOME is a successful project because it's not dead (short explantion).
But GNOME is also successful because it reaches its goals, at least in the long 
run (longer explantion).

Next, there's no problem in stating the central goal of GNOME(2): to simplify 
computer usage (or: to make computer usage as easy (simple) as possible).

I may be wrong about the next point but frameworks tends to be extensible by 
definition, thus it's not a particular characteristic of the GNOME framework.
But its flexibility is because parts of it are used in a lot of projects not 
directly associated with the GNOME project.

Thus, my suggestion is:

"GNOME is a widely-used and successful combination of desktop enviroment 
	and development platform, providing a flexible framework to simplify computer 
	usage and the building of integrated and attractive applications."

If people start complaining about the project part, you can do the following but 
that's second best, IMHO:

"The GNOME project creates a widely-used and successful combination of desktop
	enviroment and development platform, providing[...]"

My english is not really good thus you may have some corrections (is it 'the 
building' or 'the build' or 'the development' of applications, for example?)

In fact, the above suggestion is a little bit too long. But one can also drop 
the last part by writing:

"GNOME is a widely-used and successful combination of desktop enviroment 
	and development platform, providing a flexible framework to simplify 
	computer usage."

Some terms are still too technical or ugly. You might think about replacing 
'framework' by 'way' or 'software'. Additionally, 'computer usage' might be
replaced by 'daily tasks' because that's what computers are good at: regular
or 'daily' stuff.

Maybe it's even save to talk about 'computing' in general, thus the very short
form would be:

"GNOME - To simplify computing."


However. Enjoy and feel free to change.

Claus