Greetings,
I have been tinkering around with a distribution called gNewSense, a distribution endorsed and sponsored by the Free Software Foundation. I'm currently running version 3.1

I had a question about it.

I was wondering what the default desktop environment is. It looks to me like either Gnome 2 or the MATE desktop environment. I'm not sure which one it is. Both desktop environments look very similar to me.
A few places on the internet seem to indicate that it might actually be Gnome 2, however, I was under the impression that development for that version of the Gnome desktop has long ago stopped, and, in essence, the MATE desktop has taken it's place and continues to be developed for.

Thank you

gNewSense indeed uses Gnome 2 as the default desktop environment. Why they haven't chosen MATE or Gnome 3, I don't know, since your impression is correct and Gnome 2 is deprecated and not developed anymore. That is why MATE even exists.