Damien Katz had said the document-like Lotus Notes db inspired him to create CouchDB.

He talked about this in a 2009 podcast: "You can think of Damien Katz' CouchDB project as the distilled 'good stuff' from Lotus Notes. Wait! Why are you running away? Come back! It's not that bad! We swear!" http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4150.html