I think it's clear that they didn't really know what they were getting into. Much like GNU freebeards designing a core system and "throwing on a GUI" ends with a terrible mess, a bunch of UI guys inexperienced in systems software yields a beautiful failure. Think of that 'programmer hierarchy' poster: "Ruby programmers consider themselves superior to everybody but are not aware of the existence of non-web languages." You need to have different backgrounds or really deep experience to come out with something great.