For one, GNOME is usually compared with Mac OS X. I find your comparison with Windows pretty funny. Secondly, look at the gnome-shell discussion on planet.gnome

For one, GNOME is usually compared with Mac OS X. I find your comparison with Windows pretty funny. Secondly, look at the gnome-shell discussion on planet.gnome.org. Further, just because Windows has things looking like GNOME doesn't mean one copied from the other. Especially not that GNOME copied from Windows. Click e.g. on the clock in GNOME. IIRC that is now in Vista.