After the introduction of Windows 95, it was clear that the free software universe was lacking a number of technologies and that we were lagging behind in various areas.

At Microsoft I learned the truth about ActiveX and COM and I got very interested in it inmediately [sic]. Upon my return to Mexico Federico and I started to design a GUI control infrastructure for Unix that we code named `GNOME'.

"The Story of the GNOME project" http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html

or "How one man ruined everything"