> It is funny this kind of came full circle. Damien Katz, the original CouchDB author was working on Lotus Notes as some point in his life. After many years, his "creation" comes back to IBM. There is some irony in there I think.

Actually there is one more step. At some point IBM backed Damien's development of CouchDB: http://damienkatz.net/2008/01/faq_about_couch.html