The Joy of Reference Counting - Discusses referencing counting in COM, and briefly contrast with the approach taken by CORBA, by David Chappell. - http://www.chappellassoc.com/articles/article_Refer_Counting.html
Building COM Components on UNIX - Discusses DCOM on the UNIX platform. It covers platform compatibility issues, the UNIX-specific architecture of DCOM, and implementing a DCOM component on UNIX. By Christian Gross, euSOFT. - http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/msdn_unixcom.htm
COM, DCOM, and Related Capabilities - An evaluation of COM architecture, by Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. - http://www.sei.cmu.edu/str/descriptions/com.html